


Unexpected Relations

by grim_lupine



Series: Stepbrothers AU [1]
Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, First Time, High School, Jealousy, M/M, Pining, Step-siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-28
Updated: 2011-03-28
Packaged: 2017-10-22 19:08:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grim_lupine/pseuds/grim_lupine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s true, there’s remarkably little awkwardness between Mark and him. Maybe it’s because they’re both mature enough to work past any that might arise, for the sake of their parents. Maybe it’s because Eduardo can see that Mark is a better person than he seems to think he is, and Mark doesn’t care that Eduardo doesn’t always feel like being kind and giving, that sometimes he just wants to say exactly what he’s thinking.</p><p>Maybe it’s because they’d both been looking for the kind of friend that would understand them fully, and it just so happened that this is the way they met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

-

\--

 **MARK**

“Just please, please, be nice, would you?” Mark’s dad says, sounding more than a little desperate. “I really like her. I’m about eighty percent sure that she likes me in return. You and her son are the deciding factors in this, so once again, I ask you— _please_ be nice. I’ll buy you whatever you want. Almost.”

“Resorting to bribery?” Mark says, shoving his hands in his pockets and raising his eyebrows. “Also, I’m getting some mixed messages from you, Dad. You always tell me to “be myself” and “don’t let anyone change me” and now you’re telling me to act like someone I’m not? Sixteen is an emotionally delicate age, this could be wildly damaging to my self-esteem. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s false advertising. She might not be too happy when she finds out I don’t actually emit rainbows and butterflies.”

His dad claps him on the shoulder. “You can be yourself after you get them to like you,” he says firmly, but Mark can tell he’s not really serious. Mark just snorts in answer. “Her son’s your age,” his dad says hopefully. Wonderful. This is suddenly very reminiscent of all those times his dad tried to get him to be friends with the children of _his_ friends, like the parental connection guaranteed instant lifelong camaraderie or something. Those enforced playdates usually ended with Mark’s teeth embedded in someone’s shin or the other kid pushing Mark’s head into the dirt. His dad pretty much stopped trying when Mark turned ten.

“I’m sure we’ll be best friends in no time,” Mark says. “After all, who doesn’t like me?”

He smirks as the panic on his dad’s face ratchets up another level.

*

The moment they reach their lunch table, Mark is certain this is going to be a disaster.

The problem’s not his dad’s new girlfriend (though that term sounds decidedly out of place, she looks like such a—a _mom_ ), no, she seems nice enough—she introduces herself right away as Maria, and her smile doesn’t dim when Mark just kind of awkwardly waves at her. And it’s not that her son looks evil or mean or like he’s thinking up ways to drown Mark in a toilet or anything.

It’s that he looks like something out of a Disney movie. No, seriously—all big eyes and ear-to-ear smile and honestly? This kid looks like _he_ might actually emit rainbows and butterflies. Mark doesn’t have anything against genuinely nice people, it’s that they typically don’t tend to like _him_ very much. He always opens his mouth and inevitably something sarcastic and socially inappropriate comes out of it (he really can’t help himself sometimes), and he can just see the slow gloomy erasure of their smile, like—like he’s _eating away their sunshine_. It’s all very depressing. Mark starts counting down the time in his head until the moment he’s sure that easy, open smile will turn into something shocked and appalled. It’s an expression Mark’s pretty familiar with.

He does want his dad to be happy, though, so he resolves to at least _try_ this time. If all the idiots in the world can have conversations that don’t end in insults/tears/death threats, how hard can it really be?

“Hi, I’m Eduardo,” the guy says, and he looks like he’s dying to shake Mark’s hand or something, but apparently he notices Mark’s hands shoved firmly into his pockets, and he doesn’t try to draw him out, so—there’s one point for him, at least. “And you’re Mark.”

“Really? Fascinating,” Mark says immediately, and oops. That resolution dissolved pretty quickly. Amazingly, though, Eduardo just laughs.

“Sorry,” he says, grinning. “That was pretty stupid. Maybe we can get the stupidity out of the way with the introductions, though.”

“I see you’re an optimist,” Mark deadpans. “That bodes well for our acquaintance.” Eduardo’s eyes just crinkle up like that’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, and, uh, okay. That’s not the reaction Mark usually gets.

Maria looks at them both fondly. Mark’s dad just looks like he’s going to pass out in relief.

Mark shrugs and pulls his seat out so he can sit down. Maybe this won’t be a nightmare after all.

*

 **EDUARDO**

Eduardo still remembers the everyday crushing weight of trying to live under someone’s constant disapproval. Everything he ever did, everything he tried so hard at, all of it met with a flat look that said _that isn’t good enough. You aren’t good enough._

His father never hit him a day of his life, but sometimes Eduardo wonders if he might have preferred it if he had. If he had shown some sign that Eduardo’s presence stirred _anything_ in him, beyond the weary disappointment that imbued his every gesture and conversation.

There are really two things that Eduardo’s father has given him—the tall, long-limbed stature that looks commanding on his father, and impossibly stork-like on Eduardo; and the driving need to be perfect in whatever he does. He can’t help it. He’ll never be able to shake that last.

He tried forever to be what his father wanted in a son, even past the point where he knew it was impossible, because he didn’t know that there was any other option for him. He didn’t know there was a chance for change.

He’d known his mother loved him, but he hadn’t known _how much_ until she sat him down when he was fourteen and told him seriously, “I’m leaving your father, and I’m taking you with me.”

He heard the words, but couldn’t piece together a meaning from them for a moment. Then he found his voice, and all he could say was, “ _Why?_ ”

His mother smiled at him sadly, cupped his face in her hand, and said quietly, “I can’t remember the last time I heard you laugh, Eduardo. Can you?”

He couldn’t.

His father didn’t care when they left. After all the hurts he’d ever had, Eduardo didn’t know why that one hurt so much, but it did. _That’s the last_ , he promised himself then. _I won’t let him hurt me again._

Now, two years later, Eduardo looks at Mr. Zuckerberg—“Call me Adam, please.”—and wonders at the fact that in thirty seconds of having known him, he can see more warmth hidden in the corners of his smile and the crinkling of his eyes than his father had ever exhibited in fourteen years.

His son—Mark, Mark seems to be missing that easy friendliness, but he makes up for it by being one of the most bitingly hilarious people Eduardo has ever met. What’s even more hilarious is the look of half-guilty surprise Mark gets on his face after he makes a sarcastic comment, _every time_ , like he honestly just can’t help what comes out of his mouth. Plus he seems to like Eduardo’s mother, which is enough to get Eduardo to like _him_.

There’s also the fact that, even after two years, Eduardo hasn’t been able to break himself of the habit of studying every word that comes out of someone’s mouth like it’s in hidden code, trying to find every possible shade of meaning in it, everything they might be thinking underneath the pleasantries they feel they have to use (it comes from years of learning the different things that _I see_ and _That’s fine_ and _I suppose that’s the best you can do_ could possibly mean; learning how to tell a mood from one word, how to dive past inscrutability and see the dissatisfaction lying beneath). It’s exhausting (people are complicated and rarely say what they mean), but it’s something he can’t stop himself from doing.

Mark is so direct it’s like he’s an alien.

It takes Eduardo maybe ten minutes to figure out that Mark says what he means and means everything he says, and that he has absolutely no use for pleasantries, and Eduardo _doesn’t have to wonder_.

He kind of wants to clone Mark when he has that realization, right then and there.

“So, uh, you—what do you like to do?” Mark says stiffly, obviously prompted by his dad’s pointedly widened eyes. “Um, please don’t say you’re an athlete or something. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just they don’t tend to get along with me considering that I spend ninety percent of my spare time with a computer and that my intellect is so obviously superior to theirs, it’s not even a contest. Uh.” Then he bites his lip like maybe he can take that entire statement back through sheer willpower alone.

Eduardo laughs, and covers his mouth as soon as he does—he’s not laughing _at_ Mark, it’s just that he’s never met someone who does simultaneous arrogance and awkwardness so well before—but Mark doesn’t look angry, just—bemused.

“The usual reaction is, uh, something thrown at my head when I say things like that,” he says. “Not laughter.” Eduardo shrugs, still smiling.

“Maybe you’re talking to the wrong people,” he says. “And I like to run sometimes, but I also like math. And reading. And, um, I wish I were better with computers.”

“Really,” Mark says, eyes narrowing, like he thinks it’s one of those things people say to be polite and he distrusts its veracity.

“Really,” Eduardo says sincerely, and Mark eyes him for a moment before sitting back in his seat.

“Okay,” he says, nodding his head. “I can help you with that.” Then he looks over at his dad and Eduardo’s mother, who are having a very intent conversation and watching Mark and Eduardo carefully at the same time (Eduardo wonders if multitasking is something they teach you when you become a parent), and says dryly, “Dad? Satisfied we’re not about to kill each other anytime soon?”

“There’s still dessert to go, I’m not relaxing yet,” Adam says, equally as dry, and Eduardo likes him even better for the realization that Mark must have gotten his sense of humor directly from him.

So Eduardo says, “Yeah, I’ve always found that cheesecake brings out the homicidal urges in me,” and relishes the sound of his mother’s laughter, the small smile Mark can’t contain.

*

“I like him. Them,” Eduardo says later, in the car, before his mother can ask. He watches her shoulders settle in relief, and thinks that even if Mark had been unimaginably unbearable, he would have borne it for his mother’s sake, because—Adam makes her look so happy Eduardo barely recognizes her. His mother deserves to look that happy all the time, every day, for the rest of her life.

And Mark is not unbearable. Far from it, in fact.

“I like them,” he repeats quietly, half to himself, and they drive in a contented silence all the way back home.

*




 **MARK**

So after that it’s like he and Eduardo have given their respective parents their blessings or something, as weird as that thought is. Mark’s dad starts spending a lot more time with Maria, and as a consequence Mark sees a lot more of Eduardo.

They’ve actually gone to high school together for the last two years, but with Mark being something of a social recluse and Eduardo having a distinct group of friends that don’t tend to go where Mark goes, they’ve never really come across each other before.

“I wish we’d been friends when I moved here, though,” Eduardo says to him one day, sitting on Mark’s bed and watching Mark at his laptop. “You’re funny. Might have taken my mind off things.”

And there’s the other thing that’s weird about this situation. Mark is not used to people thinking him funny in the sense that they appreciate his wit, as opposed to laughing at him from afar. Mark isn’t used to people _wanting_ to spend time with him, or smiling at him like they actually find him likeable.

“You don’t _have_ to spend time with me, you know,” Mark says, testing. “I won’t perish in a pile of misery if we don’t become best friends simply because our parents are dating.”

Eduardo rolls his eyes, looking bizarrely fond while doing so, and really—how is this guy even real? How has a teenage boy who emotes as much as he does managed to avoid being chewed up by the cruel adolescent world of high school? “Why, am I bothering you? You don’t seem like you have any trouble making it known when something’s bothering you,” Eduardo says, mouth quirking into a smile. “I know I don’t _have_ to spend time with you. I just like you.”

Mark eyes him for a moment. And people call _Mark_ unusual. “It’s possible I find you adequate as well,” he says dryly, and turns back to his laptop. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Eduardo grin to himself, and it takes more effort than he expects to keep his own mouth from twitching into a smile.

Oddly enough, this turns into something of a routine. The quietly comfortable sound of his dad laughing, Maria’s warm voice saying something quick and teasing, all of it drifting upstairs from the kitchen; Eduardo with his backpack spilling its contents onto Mark’s bed, studying in companionable silence as Mark codes furiously. Eduardo knows, with some kind of instinctive insight, when he needs to be quiet because Mark’s sleep-deprived and trying to figure out where all his errors are coming from, and when Mark likes to listen to him rambling about his friends/homework/whatever book he’s just read. It’s a nice kind of background noise. There’s no pressure on Mark to participate in the conversation if he doesn’t want to, but whenever he pauses to drink from his lukewarm Red Bull and interjects a sarcastic comment, Eduardo beams at him like Mark’s just handed him half of a friendship necklace or something.

And just when Mark’s almost written Eduardo off as some bizarrely cheerful anomaly of a person, he turns around and surprises Mark with a slyly wicked comment that wouldn’t sound out of place coming from Mark’s mouth. Eduardo’s an enigma, in the fullest sense of the word.

There’s his strange brand of politeness—apparently so ingrained that he’ll never break out of it, though Mark’s been waiting for weeks. Every time Eduardo tosses his things on Mark’s bed, his eyes fall on the picture Mark has framed on his bedside table—three people, one unmistakably Mark’s father, one a young curly-haired boy, and the other a smiling woman with her hand in the boy’s hair—but he never asks. It’s more awkward waiting around for him to ask than Mark imagines actually having the conversation could ever be, so he finally says one day, “You can ask, you know.” He keeps his face turned toward his laptop screen, watches Eduardo flush a little out of the corner of his eye.

“Is that your mother?” Eduardo asks, pointing at the picture; and at Mark’s answering nod, he asks, quieter, “Is she—”

“Car accident,” Mark says shortly. “I was five. I don’t remember much, but—”

His voice gives a little, which is _stupid_ , it’s not like he wasn’t expecting the question, he’s the one who brought it up in the first place—

Mark coughs to clear his throat. He can feel Eduardo’s eyes on him. “I’m sorry,” Eduardo says finally, and amazingly, coming from him it doesn’t sound trite, nothing like the meaningless condolences Mark’s heard a hundred times before. Eduardo just sounds like he really is sorry, like he wishes things were different.

“It was a long time ago,” Mark says impassively, and wonders distantly when he’d stopped typing.

“Still,” Eduardo says. “I really am sorry.”

Mark pushes away from his desk, swivels around to face Eduardo. “What about you?” he asks, makes a half-shrugging gesture with his hand and his shoulders that Eduardo clearly understands means _what about your father?_

And just like that, Eduardo’s face goes pinched, closed-off; he looks down at his hands like he’s not seeing them at all, seeing something else entirely. “We left him,” he says simply, and Mark notes the wording of that. Not _my parents are divorced_ , not _my mom left him_.

 _We left him_.

Mark, for once, doesn’t push. There’s more to Eduardo than his manners or his sense of humor, more than he lets on. Mark doesn’t like enigmas, he doesn’t like being around things that he doesn’t know, but he has time to figure Eduardo out.

“Wardo, you’re sitting on your notes,” Mark says to break the silence, nodding at the bed. Then he realizes what’s slipped out of his mouth (seriously, only Mark could accidentally give someone a nickname). He isn’t sure for a moment what Eduardo will make of it, but Eduardo just pauses, the bleak strangeness in his face disappearing, then smiles at Mark, looking pleased.

“Wardo, hmm?” Eduardo says, a little teasing. “I guess you like me after all.”

“That’s still under debate,” Mark says, and watches Eduardo’s eyes crinkle up in a smile, feeling as if something’s settling into place.

That evening, after Eduardo and Maria leave, Mark hears: the sound of his laptop humming away, his dad’s footsteps moving around the house, the “Goodnight, Mark,” his dad says through the open doorway before going to bed.

Mark stays up through the night, ignoring how quiet the house suddenly feels when he’s working in solitary silence.

*

 **EDUARDO**

They start sitting together at lunchtime at school. Mainly because Eduardo read Mark’s schedule over his shoulder, figured out they had the same lunch period, stood around awkwardly by the stairs until he saw Mark’s customary hunched-over pose and impossible-to-miss hair all lonesome at a table, sat down next to him with his paper-bag lunch and waved over a few of his friends in that direction when he saw them. Mark only blinked at Eduardo a few times, before pushing his lunch tray over a few inches to make room, so Eduardo took that as tacit approval.

“Sorry, did you want to pretend we don’t know each other while at school?” Eduardo had asked teasingly. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your carefully cultivated reputation as an emotionless loner.”

“Maybe we should,” Mark had replied, dropping a fry into his ketchup, smirking. “I don’t know that I can be seen with someone with hair like that.”

So now it’s Mark and Eduardo at a table, along with Christy and Erica, both of whom are in Eduardo’s Language and Composition class, and both of whom thankfully seem to find Mark’s brand of humor hilarious most of the time instead of offensive.

Within a week they’re joined by Dustin and Chris, who—

  


Eduardo pushed half his orange toward Mark (if ever there were anyone who looked like they needed Vitamin C, it’s Mark), and looked up when someone dropped into the seat across the table.

“Hi,” the boy said, beaming at Mark, and then Eduardo, then turning back to Mark. “I’m Dustin, I was in your CompSci class last year. When you made the student teacher cry, which was particularly impressive, by the way.”

Mark frowned. “You’re the one who changed everyone’s grade in the class so that everyone who was born in May got an A+, and everyone else got a D.”

“I deny everything, you can’t prove it was me,” Dustin said immediately. “But May _is_ an awesome month. I was born in May. Which is a total coincidence.”

“So was I,” Mark replied tonelessly. “How fortuitous.”

Dustin grinned. Eduardo liked him already. “Anyway,” Dustin continued, “you always seemed like you had a general unshakable hatred for the human race or something, and I thought there was like a thirty percent chance you’d stab me with a plastic fork if I tried to talk to you, but look! You have people sitting next to you, and no blood in sight! So I thought I’d come over and make friends. I promise, I’m housebroken and everything.”

“Oh my god,” Eduardo said, delighted. “I _did_ ruin your carefully cultivated reputation as an emotionless loner!”

Mark elbowed him, but not very hard. “Thanks for that,” he said, smiling a little.

“Oh, and the guy over there who looks like he’s considering drowning himself is Chris,” Dustin said, pointing two tables over, where a boy was staring at them and immediately whipped his head in the other direction, very clearly saying wordlessly _of course I don’t know him, what are you talking about?_ “He loves me, really,” Dustin said sincerely. He started waving at Chris frantically, making ‘come over here’ motions until Chris un-hunched and brought his tray over to their table, looking like he wanted to die.

“I’m sorry about Dustin,” was the first thing Chris said, and it fell out of his mouth so easily Eduardo suspected it was something he said often. “I know he acts like a moron, but he—well—no, he pretty much is.”

“Chris!” Dustin said, making a mournful face.

Mark leaned closer into Eduardo, saying quietly, “I’m pretty sure my life was normal before you came along.”

“Yes, but isn’t this more fun?” Eduardo said, grinning.

Mark lifted an eyebrow, but he didn’t say no.

—certainly liven things up.

“So, you two are step-brothers. Almost. Soon-to-be,” Dustin says, pointing between the two of them with his chicken nugget.

“No, we lied to you the last three times you asked that question,” Christy says, poking at her slice of pizza and making a horrified face when it oozes a little more grease. “It’s important that we hide the true nature of their relationship.”

“In reality, they’re secret lovers and they’re running away to Las Vegas together when the school year is over,” Erica adds, not looking up from her Calculus textbook.

“I like the part where I don’t even have to open my mouth,” Mark says, looking pleased through some complicated half-expression wherein his mouth tries to move from its usual flatly deadpan state. “You guys can stay.”

“Oh, thank you ever so much,” Erica replies, making a note in the margins, then swearing as she realizes she’s holding a pen, not a pencil.

Eduardo grins. “King Mark has made his decree! We are under royal favor, hooray.”

Chris looks like he can’t decide between horror and amusement. “I never thought I’d find somewhere that Dustin actually fits in, and yet here we are.”

“Okay, but it’s just—you two don’t act like any stepbrothers I’ve ever met. Where’s the jealousy, the awkwardness, the fights!” Dustin says, still waving his lunch around for emphasis.

“Dustin, they’re the only two stepbrothers you know, and they’re not living in a Disney family comedy,” Chris says pointedly. “Now eat your lunch before I push your face in it.”

Dustin makes a sad face, but starts eating anyway.

Eduardo thinks about what Dustin said for a minute. It’s true, there’s remarkably little awkwardness between Mark and him. Maybe it’s because they’re both mature enough to work past any that might arise, for the sake of their parents. Maybe it’s because Eduardo can see that Mark is a better person than he seems to think he is, and Mark doesn’t care that Eduardo doesn’t always feel like being kind and giving, that sometimes he just wants to say exactly what he’s thinking.

Maybe it’s because they’d both been looking for the kind of friend that would understand them fully, and it just so happened that this is the way they met.

Eduardo shrugs. “I guess we’re just amazing like that,” he says, and pushes some of his baby carrots onto Mark’s tray. Mark says nothing. A second later, his shoulder bumps against Eduardo’s.

Eduardo smiles.

*




 **MARK**

Of all the things that Mark likes about Maria, the thing he might like most is that she doesn’t push. She’s probably one of the least pushy people he’s ever known in his life. She doesn’t try to make friends with him like it’s a requirement for being involved with his dad. She doesn’t mind that he goes quiet around her, she doesn’t try to get him to open up and share. She doesn’t try to talk about his mom, she doesn’t say things like “I’m not trying to take her place”, as if she _could_ ; no, she understands that they are two entirely different things, and that Mark is very intelligent and doesn’t need that explained to him.

And like Eduardo, she looks at him sometimes with a smile on her face. Like she sees something in him that she likes. Mark still doesn’t quite know how to deal with that, so mostly he does what he’s been doing from the start—goes a little quiet, amasses facial expressions and warm words and other information from their interactions and tries to parse it in a way that will make it make sense. Mark’s pretty sure things shouldn’t be going this well. Life doesn’t really work like that.

It shouldn’t be this easy.

Apparently Maria thinks nothing of it, though; she’s as natural as ever. One day after school it’s just them at home (his dad’s working late, and Eduardo’s at one of his million-and-one extracurricular activities), and Maria says, “Mark? Would you like to help me with dinner?”

Mark’s brain freezes for a moment like she’s asked him an essay question instead of a simple ‘yes/no’. “Um, okay,” he finally says, because he may not have Eduardo’s ever-present weirdly ingrained manners, but he knows when something would be rude, and she’s _asked_ him, and—something inside him squirms a little bit painfully at the thought of being rude to this woman.

Maria smiles at him, and sets him to chopping up peppers and stirring the pot on the stove. Mark can count the number of dishes he knows how to cook on one hand (noodles. Noodles. Soup. More noodles), but he’s actually very good at following directions, when the directions are clear and comprehensible and not patronizing.

He’s just shoving the empty cutting board into the dishwasher when he hears the door slam and Eduardo walks in, dropping his backpack on the floor by the table. He stops when he sees his mother and Mark in the kitchen, and his face does something complicated and then goes unreadable.

Mark grits his teeth, keeps his expression neutral through sheer force of will. If _this_ is what will make Eduardo’s kind demeanor dissolve, having to share his mother’s time with Mark, well, Mark realizes he’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop for months now, and it will be something of a comfort to finally know, at least. People don’t _work_ this way, people are selfish and jealous and needy and uncomfortable with sharing the things they value, and those constants make sense to Mark. If this makes Eduardo break, then at least he will finally start making sense.

Except Eduardo’s eyes go soft, his mouth curving into a smile, because he is _not a real person_. Mark lets out the breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“What, no apron?” Eduardo says, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. “Mark, why are you depriving me of my blackmail opportunities?”

“I may not have much fashion sense, but I do draw the line somewhere,” Mark replies. Eduardo grins, picks up his backpack again. He takes a few steps forward and leans over the pot on the stovetop to inhale, knocking his hip against Mark’s side, accepting the affectionate kiss Maria drops onto the top of his head before he heads upstairs.

“I’ll finish this,” Maria says, smiling. She hesitates for a moment, then brushes some of the hair off of Mark’s forehead in an effortless gesture. “Thank you for helping,” she says carefully, and Mark hears unspoken echoes of meaning in that short sentence; a kind of approval, an uncomplicated liking that makes his fingers twitch uneasily.

If his throat is a little tight, well, he’s just thirsty.

Mark makes sure to drink a glass of water before following Eduardo upstairs.

*

It surprises exactly zero people when Mark’s dad and Maria sit Mark and Eduardo down a few weeks later and tell them they’re going to get married.

“…Shocking,” Eduardo says after a beat, mouth quivering in amusement.

“And here I thought the endgame was for you to start up a bakery together,” Mark adds, slouching in his seat. Maria covers her smile with one hand, while Mark’s dad just sighs mournfully.

“There’s two of you now. My life is complete,” he says, with something behind his put-upon expression that suggests he might actually mean it.

All sarcasm aside, they really did look a little nervous about discussing the subject, which Mark doesn’t really get—it’s not like he and Eduardo had no idea of what was going on here, but apparently love makes you irrational or something. Just another reason for Mark to never fall into its trap.

So they get married.

Which is not exactly an excruciatingly detailed description of the event, but it’s how Mark thinks of it—because the wedding itself isn’t all that important (beyond the fact that Maria looks beautiful and Mark’s dad is beaming and Mark feels horrifyingly uncomfortable out of his hoodie and jeans and Eduardo looks ecstatic that he gets to dress up), what’s important is how little it feels like anything has changed. His dad and Maria look slightly giddier, but just as happy as they’ve seemed this whole time; Maria and Eduardo have been slowly moving in for a few weeks now (which, Mark’s happy that Eduardo’s taken the study right next door as his bedroom, but now his dad has a very nearby standard by which he can judge Mark’s cleaning habits, and raise an eyebrow as if to say _Your room could look like_ this _, you know_ ), and everything retains the very domestic feel it’s taken on lately.

In fact, the only thing that’s really changed is—Mark feels some reserve inside of him give a little; realizes that a small part of him has been waiting in fearful anticipation for things to break, and that part has finally relaxed. It’s stupid, Mark knows that marriage doesn’t guarantee forever, _nothing_ guarantees forever, he’s learned that, but still—it feels like they aren’t going anywhere now.

Mark’s always had a good relationship with his father, one of mutual respect, teasing sarcasm borne of sharing the same sense of humor, easy affection on his father’s part that Mark returns in his own way; but one person could be an anomaly, one person could be an aberrance. Now there are three people living in his house that actually like Mark, like him openly and without qualification, and it’s—somewhat staggering. A little wonderful.

It’s eleven thirty at night, and Mark settles in his desk chair, watches Eduardo sprawl carelessly in Mark’s bed like he knows it’s his designated spot. He could track the progression of their friendship through the changes in Eduardo’s posture—from the start, when he sat gingerly on the edge like he was unsure of his welcome, to when he slowly starting relaxing, swinging his feet up next to him and getting comfortable, to now, when he’s lying on his back with his head on Mark’s pillow, one foot on the floor and the other stretched out on the bed, head tilted sideways a little so he can watch Mark in the semi-light of Mark’s room.

“So. Stepbrothers,” Eduardo says, breaking the silence, laughing a little self-consciously because it probably sounds stupid to him when he says it out loud. But Mark gets it. Eduardo’s his best friend, if only because there’s no one else willing to sign up for the job (but that’s not it, it’s his easy laughter and his charm and his openness and how he is everything Mark can’t be, and yet Mark, who resents _everything_ that doesn’t come to him easily, can’t find it in himself to resent him), but best friends change, they grow apart, they fall out. They have the option of breaking.

It’s unforgivably irrational, but _stepbrothers_ rings of permanence.

“Yeah,” Mark says, hoping for once that everything he can’t say comes through anyway. From the way the awkwardness fades out of Eduardo’s expression, the way his smile grows under the light-shadow mixture playing over his face, it does.

*

 **EDUARDO**

Every morning it takes Mark approximately twelve minutes to move from his sleep-stupor to a level of awareness where he realizes there are other people in the room and he’s about to put salt into his coffee instead of sugar. Eduardo knows this because he always wakes up before Mark does, and watching Mark slowly return to the land of the living is his entertainment while he eats his usual toast and orange juice.

One time Mark still has his eyes closed while he’s sitting at the table, and the salt actually makes it into the cup that time.

“Wow, okay, don’t drink that,” Eduardo says, reaching out and wresting it from Mark’s grasp. Adam shoots Eduardo a mildly disappointed look, like he wanted to see Mark’s disgusted flailing after he drank from it and Eduardo just ruined it for him. “You’re a terrible person,” Eduardo tells him, and Adam grins.

“Where do you think he got it from?” he asks, jabbing his finger in Mark’s direction before returning to his BlackBerry.

“Mmmph,” Mark says, and blinks at Eduardo when he sets a fresh cup with _sugar_ this time in front of him.

Eduardo takes it as the thanks it’s clearly meant to be.

*

Mark keeps the bathroom counter freakishly clean, but drops all of his dirty clothes in a pile by the door. As the week progresses, the pile grows larger until Eduardo can only open the door halfway to get inside.

“Is this some kind of science experiment?” Eduardo asks, kicking a pair of jeans that’s peeking out forlornly from underneath the door.

“I’m waiting to see how long it takes for it to become sentient,” Mark says, waiting with a towel over his shoulder and a not-so-patient expression for Eduardo to move so he can get inside the bathroom.

“How very mad scientist of you.” Eduardo steps aside. “You’d tell me if you had plans for world domination, right?”

“Of course,” Mark says. “I’d need minions, after all.”

*

Eduardo doesn’t mind doing laundry, but he hates cleaning bathrooms. Mark’s the reverse.

“Huh. Well, that’s easy enough,” Mark says the first time they have the chores conversation.

“Okay, but I’m not washing your dirty sheets,” Eduardo says wickedly, and ducks when Mark aims a swat at his head.

*

On weekends, Adam and Eduardo are early risers. They watch the news in comfortable silence and make breakfast for when Eduardo’s mother and Mark wake up.

Sometimes his mother takes Mark grocery shopping and forces him to pick out things he likes to eat other than noodles, candy and energy drinks.

“Do you ever feel like sometimes we’re living in a weird Stepford world where nothing goes wrong?” Eduardo asks one day, stretching out on Mark’s bed and watching Mark crack his knuckles in his version of limbering up.

“Don’t worry, it’s all an act to get you to lower your guard before I smother you in your sleep,” Mark says absently.

Eduardo laughs, feels it vibrate low in his throat. Mark twitches a little at the sound.

“Excellent. Thanks for the warning,” Eduardo says, and Mark uh-huhs in answer.

*

At lunch, Christy sits on one side of him and explains why he can’t word the thesis statement of his essay the way he did, no really, that’s terrible, it’s physically hurting me to look at it. Her hair is long and brushes against his shoulder. It smells sweet, floral. She smiles at him when she’s done, and he can’t help but smile back.

On the other side of him, Mark is silent, and very still. Eduardo tries to give him the rest of his Twix bar, but Mark shakes his head, pushes Eduardo’s hand away.

*

Most nights, Eduardo goes to bed before Mark, because Mark would be entirely happy in a world full of people who do things from the hours of six PM to four in the morning, and then sleep the rest of the time. Lying in bed, he can hear Mark on the other side of the thin wall, fingers clacking away at his keyboard in a frenzy, occasionally murmuring encouragement and insults at himself as he alternately makes a breakthrough or hits an obstacle.

Honestly, when Eduardo thinks about it later, he’s surprised it takes as long as it does for him to hear—

the bed’s a little creaky, it squeaks and jolts when Mark shifts around, and at first Eduardo thinks Mark’s just getting settled, but then

a half-gasp, little noises, the bed takes on a more rhythmic movement

Mark’s breathing is rushed, audible

—wow, okay. Eduardo’s face goes instantly hot.

He can be adult about this. Mark’s just used to not having to be cautious about this, it’s not like Eduardo thought he never jerked off, Eduardo does it too, he can just—ignore it. It’s no big deal.

He turns to face the other direction, digging his left hand into his sheets when he hears Mark finish, wonders distantly why his heart is pounding so hard. It takes him longer to fall asleep than he thinks it should.

(The next morning, he knows Mark has remembered that there is now a need for caution by the way his cheeks tinge faintly red and he won’t meet Eduardo’s eyes. By mutual unspoken decision they never bring it up.)

(Mark keeps it quiet after that. Even if he strains his ears, Eduardo never hears him at it again, which is a good thing. Yes.)

*

“He says what he means, you know,” Erica says, looking thoughtfully at Mark, who is standing a few feet away and letting Dustin talk at him. Even his posture looks comically beleaguered. “You don’t meet a lot of people like that.”

Eduardo watches him as well, thinks about the time he’d first settled into Mark’s room to do his work and asked _Is this—_ , and Mark had replied _I don’t mind_ ; the time Mark said quietly, as if confessing something _Your mom is—she’s nice_ , and wouldn’t look Eduardo in the eyes; the time he’d kicked at Eduardo’s ankle and said _How are you a real person?_ , so clearly meant to be cutting, so clearly not.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says, still watching. “I know.”

*

Christy is sardonic and funny and very, very smart, and Eduardo likes the way she clicks her nails against the hard cover of her textbooks, the way she smiles with her teeth, the way she looks predatory when she talks about the debate in her Government class that she is going to win.

“What do you think?” Eduardo asks, looking up at the ceiling. Mark’s ceiling still has a couple of lonely glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on it, the kind that kids have when they’re younger and that he probably is too lazy to take down until they start falling, one by one. “Do you think she likes me?”

Mark’s fingers pause, go silent. His voice sounds a little strange when he says, “I wouldn’t know.”

Eduardo doesn’t ask again.

*




 **MARK**

When Mark was about seven, he had this plastic dinosaur that he used to carry around everywhere, into the bath, to school, to the park. Its name was Hungry. Apparently seven-year-old Mark thought that sounded like a dinosaur sort of name. Anyway, one time there was a kid on the playground who wanted to play with Mark’s dinosaur. He was nice about asking at first, but Mark kept telling him no. Finally, the kid tried to pull Hungry out of Mark’s hands by force.

Mark pushed him backwards down the slide.

Mark’s dad likes to tell this story and follow it up with, “I guess my son was asleep in kindergarten the day they taught them that sharing is caring.”

This story is important beyond the fact that Mark’s dad likes to take every possible opportunity to try and embarrass him because it builds character or something, because his dad is right—Mark does have trouble with sharing. Actually, that might be the understatement of the century.

(Mark doesn’t say this, wouldn’t ever say this, but he thinks he holds things so closely to himself partly because he knows how easily they can be taken away. He thinks his dad already knows that by the way his eyes soften and go sad when he tells that story, the way he gently tousles Mark’s hair afterward. They don’t discuss certain things, but they don’t tiptoe around each other either. Mark would rather his dad tell the embarrassing story and ruffle Mark’s hair afterward than awkwardly avoid any subject that he thinks might upset Mark; that’s just the kind of relationship they have.)

Knowing this, it surprises Mark a little that he never felt that kind of possessiveness when his dad started spending time with Eduardo. It was a little strange at first, coming downstairs in the morning and seeing his dad watching the news with someone that isn’t him, but it was—it was strange in a kind of nice way.

Maybe it’s because Eduardo spent so long shooting half-guilty half-apprehensive looks at Mark whenever he started talking to Mark’s dad, like he was afraid he was going to upset Mark and that was the last thing he ever wanted to do. Maybe it’s because he sees the way Eduardo unfurls slowly in his dad’s presence, like he doesn’t expect the affection, like he needs it. Maybe it’s because Mark’s dad has never had any problem telling Mark that he loves him, and Mark is secure in that knowledge, at least.

Maybe it’s because he can think of a hundred different ways he could lose his father (some of them keep him up at night), but looking at Eduardo’s carefulness, his caring eyes, he can’t ever imagine Eduardo being one of them.

So he can relax his possessiveness when it comes to his dad. But what Mark doesn’t realizes until it slaps him in the face one day is that this new family he’s a part of has become unexpectedly important to him; and it’s his, _they’re_ his, and he doesn’t want—no one else should be allowed to get in the way.

He likes Christy—she’s smart and probably the one person he knows who’s capable of being as inappropriately funny as he is—but when he sees her smiling at Eduardo like she _owns_ a part of him, suddenly Mark is blindingly, irrationally angry, and the force of it has him freezing in place until he can breathe normally again. _Jesus_ , he doesn’t know what—normal people don’t get angry like this, they don’t cling to things like this. If Mark ever needed any proof that he’s kind of fucked up, well, here it is.

(When he was five years old Mark learned that there are no guarantees in life, that just because things are _supposed_ to happen one way doesn’t mean they will; he should have grown up in a two-parent household instead of one plus a handful of memories, of her cool hands on his forehead and her smile and the way she sang to him in her off-key voice that sounded so beautiful to him, only it didn’t happen that way, it didn’t, and Mark doesn’t know if he will ever stop feeling cheated of that.

Maybe then he would have grown up warmer, easier to like; maybe he would have read all the books and seen all the movies that talked about a pair of best friends who took on the world together, and maybe the thought wouldn’t have felt so incomprehensible, so unlikely. He’s never had a best friend, not really, not anyone who stayed, and he knows it’s because some stubborn, angry part of him refuses to soften his own edges when looking for one. He shouldn’t _have_ to change. They should want him as he is, isn’t that the point? It should be easy, it’s so easy for everyone else, why can’t it be that easy for him? It _should_ be easy.

As easy as walking into a restaurant, maybe, and making a boy laugh when you thought he’d be shocked; realizing that he doesn’t _want_ to change you because _you_ are just what he wants—)

Mark is lucky in two ways: he’s very good at hiding things, and Eduardo is very oblivious.

It might not seem that way, because Eduardo is charming and personable and _gets_ people in a way that Mark never can, but it’s like he has this giant blind spot centered directly around Mark. Sometimes Mark feels like he’s wandering around with all of his uncomfortable hot jealousy written across his forehead, every squirming half-formed thought of _you have to like me, you have to like me best, I need to be the best, the only one—you—_ and Eduardo sees none of it, just smiles at him bright and open, like he smiles at Christy when he walks past her in the hallway, like he smiles at everyone because that is just the kind of person he is.

Mark knows, or thinks, at least, that he is the only person who sees another side of Eduardo: the side that sits in a moody silence that screams out _don’t ask me questions_ , all jagged edges that would cut Mark if he tried, except Mark just shares the silence, and works, and watches Eduardo slowly come down from his tensed posture over the course of an hour until the air feels less thick with hurt; the side that scathingly picks apart the loudmouthed asshole in his Economics class so Mark can understand just how intolerable he really is, and Mark knows that come the next day Eduardo will be polite and calm and collected, because somewhere along the way he learned that that was who he had to be in life, but here he is real, because he’s with Mark.

The trouble is that Mark has never learned to do anything in moderation. When he gets angry he falls into that anger, finds it so easy to spit out the words that will wound and bite and hurt; when he needs, he needs with everything. He has this part of Eduardo that most people don’t see, but it’s not enough, he wants it all, he wants to know him best and be known in return.

It doesn’t take him very long to realize the possessiveness he’s feeling is more than seventy percent sheer jealousy, of the kind where not only would he like Eduardo to spend less time with Christy and everyone else, really, and more with Mark; but apparently he does not want Eduardo dating Christy, or even thinking about it (because he is so very clearly thinking about it), because he himself would like to be—would like to—

This is more than inconvenient.

Eduardo comes home from studying with Christy one night and falls asleep on Mark’s bed while he’s working, and Mark sees the dip of skin at his half-open shirt collar and wonders if he’s kissed Christy, if he’s planning to, what he might do if Mark kissed him, would he like it? Would he push him away, would he pull Mark closer, would he would he would he.

Mark does not like uncertainty, he doesn’t like things he can’t predict or control. Coding is easy. It makes sense, there are lines and cases and functions that either work or don’t work and Mark knows them all. Eduardo is not predictable, or easy. Eduardo has the possibility to make things blow up in Mark’s face, and Mark can’t risk it. He can’t.

That decision doesn’t make it any easier to walk into the library and see Eduardo sitting between Erica and Christy, working on something that involves all three of them laughing like they’re happy, they’re the happiest people in the world, because Eduardo is so charming and happy and everyone likes him, and Erica and Christy are pretty and nice and girls and smart (nowhere near as smart as Mark, but maybe the _pretty_ and _nice_ and _girls_ outweighs that? Maybe that’s what Eduardo wants), and really why would Eduardo want anything else? Why would he even want—

Sarcasm is easy, compared to feeling like this. Being scathing is easier still, falling into that place where words slip off his tongue all slick with venom, because if he can wound then there is no room for feeling wounded, and he knows what to say to anger, to hurt. He’s always known how to do that; it’s saying everything else that’s so much harder.

He hears himself speaking as if from a distance. “Doesn’t this look cozy.” His skin is tight. He can’t really feel his fingers. “I suppose if you can’t make up your mind which one you want, it’s best to keep all your options open,” Mark spits, and Eduardo rears back like he’s been slapped. Erica just blinks at him.

Mark doesn’t look at Christy.

“…Mark, what the hell?” Eduardo says, and he’s flushing a little, starting to look angry. Mark forgets, Eduardo hasn’t seen this side of him; and never anything close to it directed at Eduardo. Eduardo shares his worst self with Mark because Eduardo’s worst self is nothing, it’s human, something Eduardo seems to think he can’t allow himself to be. Mark’s worst self is petty, jealous and vicious and unaware of what to do with people in general, and so far it hasn’t reared its head around Eduardo, but it was only a matter of time.

This is Mark too, this part of him. Eduardo is his best friend, and Mark _wants_ , and Mark won’t change. He can’t.

Eduardo is still staring at him, looking angry and uncertain and confused.

Mark turns around and walks away.

*

 **EDUARDO**

Mark leaves, and a strained, tense silence takes his place. Eduardo is still stuck in his state of _What the hell just happened?_ , his pulse pounding distantly in his ears. He _knows_ that tone of voice Mark had, the defensive, closed-off, _vicious_ tone, intended for people who anger him or hurt him or make him feel something he doesn’t want to feel. Eduardo’s heard that tone a hundred times before. He’s never heard it directed at him. It hurts more than he would expect, like something lodging in his throat, something he can’t swallow past.

Eduardo is still staring down at his hands, spread flat on the table before him, when Erica lets out a breath and says cautiously, “Okay, then. I actually have to leave now, let’s finish up this project tomorrow, yeah?”

“Sure,” Christy says, because Eduardo is still finding his voice. “Email me tonight, I’ll look over that synthesis paper.”

Erica smiles in response, and Eduardo gathers himself together and tells her, “Bye, drive safely.” After she leaves, Eduardo turns to Christy and says helplessly, “I—what the hell just happened? He’s never—” He breaks off.

Christy eyes him for a moment, then shrugs. “I don’t know him as well as you do, but he seemed a little—jealous? Maybe he likes Erica? Prom’s coming up, he could ask her.”

“Oh,” Eduardo says. That’s—that would make sense. Mark doesn’t like having things taken away from him; he doesn’t like needing things or wanting them, and he doesn’t like knowing he can’t have them. If he were jealous, his outburst makes a lot more sense. He wasn’t angry at Eduardo personally, his behavior has an explanation. Good. That should satisfy Eduardo. That should be enough.

His chest twinges sharper than ever.

It’s probably just that Eduardo’s gotten used to being the closest thing in Mark’s sight; his best friend, even if Mark hasn’t said it explicitly. If Mark starts dating Erica, that will mean an end to the time he spends with Eduardo, just talking or listening wordlessly to Eduardo talk. Eduardo knows that he matches Mark in possessiveness when it comes to having people’s attention (too many years of finding cold indifference at every turn, of trying too hard and getting so little in return); he wants it all, he wants a promise that it won’t ever fade. It’s something he knows he has to change in himself.

Letting Mark go a little, now, is the first step.

“You should probably talk to him,” Christy says, and touches two fingers to his wrist, and Eduardo thinks—the way she smiles at him, the way she laughs, the way she looks like she’s waiting for something from him, prom’s coming up, Mark likes Erica, Christy is funny and brilliant, maybe he should—

“Do you want to go to prom?” he asks abruptly.

Christy bites her lip. “Like, in general?” she asks, laughter in her voice. “Or were you asking for a more specific—”

“With me,” Eduardo clarifies, blushing a little.

“I’d love to,” she says, and the uneasiness in his stomach fades back almost completely. Almost.

*

When Eduardo gets home, Adam is sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open, peering at Eduardo as he walks through the door over top his reading glasses, and Mark is nowhere in sight.

“Hello, my thankfully fairly well-adjusted stepson,” Adam says.

“Uh oh,” Eduardo replies, tossing his keys on the counter.

“I don’t suppose you’d have any idea why my son tore through here looking like someone smashed his laptop and then disappeared into his room?” Adam asks, steepling his fingers under his chin. “It’s just, I thought we’d hit a winning streak of making it through the teenage years with relatively few dramatics.”

“Um,” Eduardo says, and hits a blank.

“That’s informative,” Adam says. His tone is light and amused, but Eduardo can read the concern in his eyes—he’s never made the mistake of assuming that Adam doesn’t care about Mark or his feelings or the things that upset him. It’s impossible to miss how much he does. “You know, Mark knows that he can come to me with anything that’s bothering him,” Adam continues. “I don’t know if _you_ know that, though. You don’t have to, but you can. Whatever it is. Even if you and Mark are fighting about something, I’m always here.”

Eduardo swallows hard, throat going tight, and just nods in response. How is it so _easy_ for Adam to say things like that? How is it so easy for him, when it’s so hard for Eduardo to make himself believe that he actually means them?

Adam takes pity on him, and waves him upstairs with the pen in his hand. “I just thought I should tell you. Glad we had this talk! Maybe we can try for actual words on your part next time, but if not, I’m more than capable of talking enough for the both of us,” he says, smiling at Eduardo and turning back to his laptop.

Eduardo heads upstairs, feeling a little like he’s been run over by the FeelingsMobile.

Mark’s door faces the top of the stairs. Eduardo pauses in front of it, leans his head against the wood. Listens to Mark typing for a minute, before he works up the courage to rap twice with his knuckles.

“I’m fine, Dad,” Mark calls out, sounding sharp and a little agitated.

“It’s me,” Eduardo says into the door, nose pressing against the sign that proclaims ‘Mark’s Room: Idiots Keep Out.’ “I’m coming in, Mark.”

The typing stops. There’s a pause, and then Eduardo pushes the door open.

Mark’s staring very intently at his screen, but his fingers are no longer moving. He doesn’t look up, even when Eduardo takes a few steps inside, even when he shuts the door again behind him.

“I know my acquaintance with manners is passing, at best, but isn’t it usually customary to wait for someone to let you in before you just waltz into their room?” Mark asks, finally swiveling around in his chair. The words are acidic, but he sounds more tired than anything else.

“Well, yesterday you couldn’t wait five minutes for me to get out of the shower before you came in to brush your teeth, like you had some urgent teeth-brushing emergency, so I think I’m just evening out the score,” Eduardo says. Falling into this banter with Mark is far too easy, but the tense line of Mark’s shoulders reminds Eduardo of why he is here. “So, Christy thinks you’re jealous,” Eduardo says bluntly, because there’s really no way to ease into that statement.

Mark goes white.

His elbow jerks and knocks over his thankfully empty can of Red Bull onto the carpet, and Eduardo just gapes at him for a second. He hadn’t—he hadn’t thought Mark was _this_ invested—

“No, it’s—I’m not interested in Erica!” Eduardo says hurriedly. “If you like her that much, you should—just ask her out. Ask her to prom. I’m sure she’d say yes.”

Mark stares at Eduardo, then blinks and looks away. “Erica. Of course. I—thank you, I will,” he says, and his voice is flat and stripped bare of emotion. Eduardo gets it—Mark doesn’t like to share his emotions, share himself with other people, and he’s been cut too raw today already—but it hurts, a little. He hadn’t thought he was ‘other people’ in Mark’s eyes, anymore.

“Right,” Eduardo says, and takes another step back. The air is still a little strained, and for once Eduardo doesn’t know what to do to fix it.

“Wardo,” Mark says abruptly, and looks up at Eduardo again. “I’m—I’m not really a nice person, you know. I know you think I’m this—I’m just someone who needs a friend or whatever, but it, I can be a lot more of an asshole than I was today. I’m very good at that. I don’t think you get that.”

Eduardo looks at him, shoulders hunched defensively, but still looking Eduardo straight in the eyes with all the force he has. He’s prickly and acerbic and confusing and sweet and he’s Eduardo’s best friend.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re wrong,” Eduardo says gently. “I think it’s easier for you to be nice than you think it is. But if you’re worried, don’t be: if you feel the overwhelming urge to be an asshole, I’ll tell you you’re being an asshole, and maybe I’ll yell at you for a bit, but you’re stuck with me. Okay?”

Mark’s jaw works, like he’s swallowing all his words. Finally he just nods jerkily, and swivels back around.

Eduardo looks at the line of his back for a moment. The tension has eased out of the room, but Mark’s shoulders are still set in a stiff, unforgiving line.

Eduardo leaves. He doesn’t know what else to do.

*

The next day, Mark and Erica show up at lunch together, and Mark is awkwardly holding Erica’s textbook for her, like someone along the way told him that was what you did when you dated a girl.

Eduardo clears a space for them, and leans into Christy’s side, and doesn’t know why it’s so hard to keep the bright smile on his face from fading away.

*




 **MARK**

Erica bites her left thumbnail when she’s concentrating hard on something. It’s the only nail she bites, and it’s in a constant state of raggedness. She writes clear, ordered notes with bullet points and roman numerals and dashes, and keeps a softly battered copy of _A Separate Peace_ in her purse. She laughs at Mark’s jokes; she makes friends easily, like a smile and a kind word is all she needs, but she sits with Mark in the library in easy silence like it’s just as worthy a way to pass time.

When Mark asks her out, she stares at him for a moment with an evaluating gaze that—well, it scares the hell out of Mark. Eduardo knows people, for the most part, and Christy is never at a loss for words, and Dustin and Chris are relentlessly outgoing, but Erica _sees_ things. She sees people, and for someone as laden with secrets as Mark is, that’s quite frankly terrifying. But she says yes. Looks at him like maybe she sees right through him, but says yes, anyway.

There is no point dwelling on the things he can’t have. Erica likes him, and she’s smart enough to keep up with him. That is enough.

*

(Eduardo comes home sometimes with his hair just a little messed up, his mouth just a little red, and Mark’s dad flashes him a thumbs up, and Maria smiles at him, and Mark clenches his jaw so tight he thinks his teeth might crack, and Eduardo doesn’t notice a _damn thing_ , and it turns out letting someone go is easier said than done, and _fuck_ this—)

*

“Do you think they practice that?” Erica asks with interest, leaning forward in her chair a little and motioning subtly to the table a few feet away. Mark looks up from his notebook to where she’s pointing and sees the Winklevoss twins, the tall athletic popular seniors with more white shiny teeth than brains, who are currently putting on a show by sitting the exact same way, smiling at their (presumably) respective girlfriends in the same way. They’re even dressed the same way today. It’s like they’re holding signs screaming ‘Look at our Super-Special Synchronized Twindom! Don’t you Wish You Were Us?’. Mark can’t even tell them apart on a normal day—he just knows there’s the loud one and the almost-normal one.

“Well, you know, in all the spare time I devote to thinking about the Winklevii—” Mark starts dryly, and Erica laughs and pushes his shoulder.

“Shut up. I was just wondering,” she says, and pushes her textbook away. Mark knows she’s avoiding doing her Calc homework. Presumably even discussing the Winklevii is preferable to calculating derivatives. “They could start their very own circus act,” she adds, mouth quirking into a smile.

“Plenty of Brawn, Devoid of Brains?” Mark suggests.

“Hot Blond Twins: Double the Fun,” Erica says slyly, and at Mark’s sideways look, she grins and adds, “Relax, you’re _much_ cuter.” She pats his hand and it’s affectionately mocking, but she also bumps her knee against his under the table, so he doesn’t take offense. Much. Not really.

“I’m enough fun for two people,” he mutters, and he knows she’s laughing at him when she says, “That you are, Mark.”

Her hair is always falling into her eyes, and her knee is still pressed against his own, and he’s never bored with her, at least.

*

(Mark buys all of his hoodies and jackets in oversize, so it turns out they fit Eduardo near perfectly in the arms; one time Eduardo darts into his room and says, “Can I borrow this?” At Mark’s nod he grabs a jacket and zips it up over his shirt, smiles at Mark, and dashes back out.

He stays at Christy’s for dinner that evening, and Mark thinks: _that’s my jacket you’re wearing, are you kissing her right now? do you remember that’s my jacket while you’re kissing her, do you think about me at all when you’re there? it’s mine, you’re wearing something that’s mine,_ you’re _mine—_

Coding is impossible when he’s like this. Mark is a mess.)

*

Dustin drops his books on the table where Mark’s sitting by himself in the library. “Dude. What are you doing?” he asks with no preamble.

Mark looks up. “Studying? I realize it’s a foreign concept to you, but some of us—”

“Yeah, actually not what I meant,” Dustin interrupts. “I mean with _Erica_. She’s great and all, and I realize that Wardo has apparently taken obliviousness as his new method to live by or something, but—”

“Dustin. Do you really want to have the love life conversation?” Mark lifts his eyebrow and tilts his head in the direction of Chris, who is currently leaning over the checkout desk and flirting with the guy manning the computer.

Dustin looks over there for a second, then scowls down at his hands. “Fine. Moratorium on the romance talk.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Mark says, and tries not to think about how pathetic they both are. He clears his throat. “I looked at that thing you sent me. You realize your code is wildly inefficient, right?”

“Like hell it is!” Dustin says indignantly, and they continue on that topic for a while, because this? _This_ is something they understand, something they can control, something that works for them.

Yeah. More than a little pathetic.

*

(“So, how are things with Erica? You two seem good together,” Eduardo says one day, leaning in Mark’s doorway. He’s stopped spending his time in Mark’s room anymore, and Mark doesn’t know why—well, he knows why he’s stopped _most_ of the time, because he’s spending time with Christy, because he’d rather be making out with Christy than sprawling on Mark’s bed and listening to him type; but even when Eduardo’s at home, it doesn’t _feel_ like he’s at home. It feels like he’s pulling away.

Mark looks up, and Eduardo is smiling, and—that is not a smile. That is Eduardo’s ‘Lying to People’ face. That is the face that Eduardo makes when he’s being polite, and saying the right things, and he’s _never_ used it with Mark, _what is going on?_

“Yeah, we’re—it’s great,” Mark says stiffly. Eduardo is lying, and Mark is lying right back, and this is so fucked up, and Mark doesn’t _get it_ —)

*

“My phone’s dead, do me a favor?” Eduardo asks, leaning on the locker next to Mark’s. “Call home and let them know I’ll be back later tonight? I’m taking Christy to a movie.”

Mark’s fingers fumble a little on the combination. “Sure,” he says, with all the calm in the world. “But that’ll be both of us tonight. I’m studying at Erica’s.”

Eduardo says nothing for a few seconds. “Of course. Have fun,” he says finally, and claps Mark on the shoulder before leaving.

They really do study at first, because both Erica and Mark take their grades very seriously. They’re in her room with the door open (Erica’s mom pops in every twenty minutes or so to make sure they’re the appropriate two feet apart), and at one point Erica looks up from her notebook and smiles up at Mark with her chin tipped up, and really, that’s a cue not even Mark could miss.

Erica’s lips taste like vanilla chapstick. She fists a hand in his t-shirt to keep him where she wants him, and he puts his tongue in her mouth, and it’s nice. It’s nice, everything’s so damn nice, and _not enough_ , not what he wants; he doesn’t need anyone else to tell him that what he’s doing isn’t fair to her, but it’s not like he doesn’t _want_ this to work out with her, god knows it’d be easier for him if it would, but he _can’t_.

It isn’t like he doesn’t like it, of course he likes it, he’s a teenage boy and anything even resembling someone else’s skin near his gets him hard; but Erica isn’t who he really wants, and he can’t forget that.

But he’s a coward and he needs someone who wants _him_ , so he just pulls away after a few moments and says, “Wow, that was pretty daring under your mom’s spying regime.”

Erica grins at him and tucks her hair behind her ear. “I’ve got her timed. In another four minutes she’s going to come back up to see if we want anything to eat. Just in case our answer changed from fifteen minutes ago.”

Mark smirks, and turns back to his reading, and says absolutely nothing of what he is really thinking.

*

(“How was the movie?” Mark couldn’t care less, but Eduardo is back in his room, sitting on his bed again like he used to, and apparently they’ve been reduced to small talk.

“Good,” Eduardo says. His head is tilted down, he’s looking at his hands. Mark can’t see his eyes. “How’d the studying go?”

“It was productive,” Mark says emotionlessly.

“How romantic,” Eduardo teases, but the tone of his voice is off. Mark doesn’t know if this awkwardness between them is entirely of his own doing, and Eduardo is just reacting to what he’s getting from Mark, or if there’s a part of it coming from Eduardo as well. Mark hates not knowing most of all.

Maria comes upstairs to say goodnight to both of them, and eyes them like she wants to lock them up until they start making sense again. Mark kind of knows the feeling.)

*

Sometimes he dreams—Eduardo sprawled back on Mark’s bed, familiar except for the way his shirt is riding up and he’s smiling at Mark intently and pulling him down to kiss him. In the hazy dream-world, a kiss feels like it takes both an hour and a split second at once, too much and never enough; Mark is brave in his dream, tugs Eduardo’s shirt over his head, settles on his lap and kisses him until they break away to breathe together. Eduardo is hard, he puts his long, clever hands on Mark’s skin, he bites Mark’s mouth. Mark wakes up.

Sometimes Mark dreams it while awake—wanders into the kitchen in the morning, catches the curve of Eduardo’s neck as he bends over his plate, thinks about putting his mouth there and bruising the tender skin a little bit. Looks at Eduardo’s mouth, wet and lush from whatever bright and artificially-colored thing he’s been eating, wants that color against his own lips. Imagines it’s Eduardo’s long fingers on him when he’s in the shower, jerking himself off under the steady stream of water and biting his wrist when he comes.

He dreams it all. Mark is in a constant state of dizzy wanting, a miserable sweet ache in his chest and low in his gut.

They start fighting: nothing large, just small snapping fights that _should_ bleed out some of the tension between them, but instead build up and build up until Mark’s every word is a precise icicle of sarcasm, and Eduardo can’t stay in the same room with him for more than ten minutes.

Eduardo is absolutely blind, and Mark can’t help but resent it. He feels like he’s walking around with a neon sign above his head, all flashing letters that can’t be missed, and yet there Eduardo is. Missing it.

“Can’t you just _tell_ me what’s bothering you?” Eduardo asks once, sounding more desperate than he probably means to sound.

Mark doesn’t turn around from his laptop. “I don’t think I asked for a therapist, Eduardo.”

Eduardo leaves. It isn’t anything like the kind of satisfaction Mark is looking for, but it’s something. At least he is still in perfect control of his own words. At least he still knows how to push people away.

*

(And yet. There is the Saturday afternoon when they’re both home by themselves, and Mark falls asleep in front of the television sitting up. The next thing he knows, he blinks awake to find himself laid out across the couch with a blanket tucked neatly around him and a covered glass of orange juice on the little magazine table next to him.

Mark covers his face with one hand, ignores the warm little spark trying to flare up in his chest. This is what he can’t handle. Mark doesn’t do well in shades of gray, he needs the clean black-and-white of things. He deals in absolutes. Either someone likes him or they don’t; he’s getting an A in a class or he isn’t doing well enough; if someone says ‘No, it’s fine’, Mark takes that to mean that it really is fine, not that they’re waiting for Mark to pick up on some indeterminate tone in their voice and fish for clarification. Binary answers.

Either Eduardo sees Mark as a brother and nothing more, or he wants him in the same consuming way Mark wants Eduardo. Mark needs to know if Eduardo’s kindness, the way he looks out for Mark, the slight strain in his eyes when he looks at Erica now—how much of that is something Mark can count on? Mark needs to know if he can let himself hope.

The easiest way would be to just _ask_. Surely it can’t get any worse than this?

But it could. Mark knows it could. And if he fucks up his relationship with Eduardo, it isn’t just his own life he’d be affecting. Mark can’t do that to his dad, to Maria. He won’t.

Mark drinks the juice, tucks his hand into the blanket, and when Eduardo cautiously peeks his head into the room, Mark hides everything away and quietly says, “Thanks, Wardo.”)

*

 **EDUARDO**

They’re fighting all the time now.

Mark says, “Get out, I don’t need a keeper.”

and, “If you want to talk about feelings so desperately, go find your girlfriend.”

and Mark says, “I don’t think I asked for a therapist, Eduardo.”

 _Eduardo_.

Eduardo leaves and leaves and leaves. He’s good at leaving. He’s good at avoiding. Conflict makes him want to bury his head in the sand, pretend it’s not happening, wait for the end.

Everything is splintering, changing, and Eduardo just wants to understand. Just wants to fix it, but how can he fix something when he’s stonewalled at every turn, a rejection so acute it stops him in his tracks like a slap every time?

Mark won’t tell him anything, and Eduardo is frightened.

*

Eduardo has heard that Mark gets lost in his laptop sometimes, in his projects, unaware of anything that is going on around him; but up until this point, he hasn’t really seen it. Oh, he’s seen Mark fall into coding that is totally incomprehensible to Eduardo, and when Mark works intently he barely stops for _bathroom breaks_ , let alone to talk to Eduardo. But Eduardo has always known that some small surface part of Mark’s brain is cataloguing his surroundings, listening to Eduardo talk so he can regurgitate some fact later that Eduardo hadn’t been sure he’d heard. Mark could tell Eduardo to leave, he could choose to work in complete silence. Eduardo knows, _had_ known, that Mark likes having Eduardo there while he works—something to be aware of distantly, a comfort, a constant.

Even now, it isn’t that Mark is lost in his work and unaware of Eduardo’s presence. That wouldn’t be a tenth as infuriating as what he’s actually doing. No, Eduardo has been leaning in Mark’s doorway for the last five minutes, and Mark is sitting on his bed with his laptop, and he hasn’t looked up to meet Eduardo’s eyes once, because he isn’t unaware, he’s _ignoring_ Eduardo. He is so determinedly ignoring him, staring at his screen, shoulders locked, that he’s practically screaming _Get out, get out, I don’t want you here._

Fuck that. Eduardo is abruptly, startlingly incensed. If Mark wants him gone so badly, he can damn well speak up and tell him so. If Mark wants Eduardo to leave him alone, if he doesn’t want them to be friends anymore, if he’s _done_ with Eduardo, then he’s going to have to find it in himself to tell Eduardo that unequivocally and finally, because otherwise Eduardo is not leaving him alone.

“Busy?” he says flatly, and watches Mark’s shoulders twitch a little. Mark finally deigns to look up at him, face schooled into blankness.

“It would appear so, wouldn’t it?” Mark replies. His voice is cool, doesn’t give an inch. Eduardo wants to splinter that calmness, doesn’t know how.

“Look, I’ve asked you a hundred times, _why_ are you acting so—” and as he’s speaking, Eduardo moves to sit at the foot of Mark’s bed by his feet, gets in close in the hopes that Mark will _show_ something—and Mark, shit, Mark can’t hide the way he flinches in upon himself, _away_ from Eduardo, and Eduardo stops like he’s been slapped.

Maybe Mark sees something in his face, because he rushes in to speak before Eduardo can say anything; and he sounds vicious and defensive but at least he sounds alive, none of that icy calm that hooks under Eduardo’s skin (because Eduardo has no defense against that kind of relentless lack of emotion, he’s never in his life known how to combat it; it might have gone easier for him if he had). “There is _nothing_ wrong, and your insistence on badgering me like this is not exactly making me inclined to share.” Mark bites each word out like it’s paining him, turns back to his laptop. Won’t look at Eduardo even when he’s _two feet_ away.

Eduardo can feel his pulse pounding in his ears. He reaches out and pulls Mark’s laptop from his grasp, slams it shut, pushes it toward the end of the bed. “Think you’ll find it easier to pay attention now?” he says roughly, and Mark snarls at him wordlessly and makes a grab for his laptop, and Eduardo clamps a hand around his wrist, and—

Mark is tugging, and Eduardo plants a hand solidly on his chest because he _needs_ Mark’s attention right now, he needs answers, he is so fucking tired of wondering what he did wrong with no clue how to fix it, he’s had enough of that for three lifetimes, and—

Mark is not especially physical, never initiated any of the half-embraces they’ve shared, doesn’t shove at Eduardo like he’s seen brothers do; but now he’s yanking his wrist out of Eduardo’s grasp and shoving back with force, like he’s at his limit too, like this is getting to him as much as it is Eduardo, and—

Mark’s head knocks against the wall, and he goes off balance and falls back on the bed. Eduardo lands straddling one of Mark’s legs, and he can see an angry flush riding Mark’s cheekbones, and Eduardo’s hand is planted on the bed by Mark’s head, Mark’s curls brushing the inside of Eduardo’s wrist. Mark is unmoving even in his fury, and Eduardo’s mouth feels dry, and the breath Mark lets out echoes in Eduardo’s ears like a gunshot. Eduardo’s stomach squirms hotly, and this feeling is entirely familiar, _shit_ —

Eduardo jumps up like he’s been burned. Mark stays where he is, eyes dark and unreadable.

“Sorry,” Eduardo manages to get out, and hits his hip against the doorframe in the haste with which he leaves the room.

Shit. _Shit_.

Leave it to Eduardo to find a way to complicate things even further.

*

So maybe Eduardo isn’t the most self-aware person in the world, but even he can’t stay behind the wall of denial he’s apparently been living behind forever.

He gets it now, he knows why he is feeling like this. Or rather, he can _admit_ it to himself. He’s known, he’s known all along that there’s more to the way he wants to watch Mark fall asleep in his breakfast, and bring him actual food when he skips lunch at school to work in the library, and push Erica away when she sits too close to Mark; more than the fact that he is just possessive over his best friend, his brother. If Mark were actually his brother this would not be a problem at all. Instead he’s found this person who _understands_ him like no one else, who he wants so much, who he _can’t have_.

Maybe he wonders for a second if Mark wants—but no, why would he? Why would he when he has Erica, so funny and smart and _normal_. Eduardo sometimes feels like he’s running the world’s most elaborate, successful con on everyone around him—convincing them that he is a functional, well-adjusted human being, when in reality he is riddled through with issues and insecurities and doubts, coloring his every action and whispering to him at night. He goes through every day waiting for someone to call him on it: _you imposter, you fake, your own father didn’t even want you, your fate is to be a disappointment and there is nothing you can do about it_.

There are maybe two people that Eduardo thinks can see right through him, and that his mother and Mark. His mother, who watched him hide inside himself for years and finally _force_ himself to be bright and outgoing and _normal_ , because to be anything else would feel like he was still living under his father’s rule. And Mark, who looked at him from the start with the keenest piercing gaze, dissecting him and accepting him in the same breath; who made it possible for Eduardo to stop pretending, if only for a little while, because Mark didn’t want Eduardo’s best self—he wanted his real self. Why would Mark choose to take on any more of that mess he saw, any more than he already has to deal with?

Mark _can’t_ want this, and there is no reason for Eduardo to bring it up.

(Eduardo’s mother is so happy, she’s started singing again, and Eduardo can just see what would happen if he opened his mouth: he could so easily ruin everything in the space of a breath. He already broke his mother’s family once. He will not do it again.)

*

But Mark still won’t talk to him, and Eduardo still doesn’t know why, and he remembers: “Even if you and Mark are fighting about something, I’m always here.”

So he goes to Adam, and fidgets over a cup of coffee for ten minutes while Adam waits patiently, and finds himself blurting out, “Mark won’t—do you know why he won’t talk to me? He says he’s not mad at me and there’s nothing wrong, but it—he just won’t talk to me. I don’t know what to _do_.”

Adam’s mouth twists a little sadly, and he says after a moment, “He hasn’t come to me either, and I can’t really read his mind, but—sometimes Mark just, he just gets like this. After his mother’s funeral, he—” Adam breaks off for a second to clear his throat, visibly searching for words. Eduardo shifts in his seat apologetically. He hadn’t meant to bring up a difficult subject, but Adam meets his eyes and shakes his head a bit, as if to say _It’s okay_.

Adam takes a sip of his coffee and continues, “Mark went through this stage where he’d cling on to me sometimes, and then he’d throw a tantrum and push me away, pretend like he didn’t need me.” Adam’s staring at the table with his eyes dark, like he’s seeing something else entirely, and not for the first time Eduardo wonders what it would have been like to grow up with a father like this, who looks as if he’d kill and die to keep his son from being hurt ever again. “Mark gets a little frightened anytime he lets someone in too close. Like he thinks it’ll hurt him less when they leave or get taken away if he pretends he doesn’t care.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eduardo says quietly.

Adam puts a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe he just needs a little time to accept that.”

Eduardo understands not believing that things are real, that they won’t change. He can give Mark time. He’s not going anywhere.

*

It’s a Saturday when Eduardo wanders into the living room and sees Mark fast asleep in front of the television, head tipping forward at what looks like a horrifyingly uncomfortable angle.

A month ago, Eduardo would have woken Mark up with a hand to his neck, laughed at him and told him to go to his room if he wanted to pass out somewhere. A few days ago, Eduardo would have left him there for fear of getting his hand bitten off at the wrist when Mark awoke.

Now, Eduardo stares at Mark’s face, slack and young in sleep, and feels his chest pang sharply. Mark slides down easily when Eduardo guides his head to the armrest on the couch, stretching his legs out gently so as not to wake him. Eduardo grabs a nearby blanket and throws it over Mark, tucking it carefully under his feet like he’s seen his mother do it. Then he goes to the kitchen and brings back a glass of juice, because if Mark is falling asleep during the middle of the day on a Saturday, he’s more drained than he’s ever going to admit.

Finally he pulls the blanket up a few inches so it reaches Mark’s chin. Mark mumbles incoherently, “W’do,” and turns his head to the side, nose brushing Eduardo’s hand. Eduardo freezes in place, heart pounding, but Mark settles back down into deep, motionless sleep.

Eduardo leaves the room, because he is giving Mark a choice here. When Mark wakes up he can pretend nothing happened and never bring it up, or—maybe they can work this out.

He drags all his homework into the kitchen, and doesn’t even bother pretending to himself that it isn’t because he wants to be able to hear Mark stirring when he finally wakes up. It’s two and a half hours later when he hears rustling noises, the clink of the glass being set down on the table. Eduardo waits a minute more, and then pokes his head into the living room.

Mark looks tired, but better than before. He meets Eduardo’s eyes properly for the first time in what feels like forever, and his quiet, “Thanks, Wardo,” pulls an unintentional relieved half-sigh out of Eduardo.

Mark ducks his head, but he’s smiling a little when he looks back up. It still has an edge of tension, like not everything’s been resolved, but that’s only to be expected. Not everything _has_ been resolved.

God, if Eduardo can only get them back to where they were before—to before all this tension and fighting and everything that’s been twisting his stomach into knots for weeks—he’ll forget everything else, he’ll push down everything he’s learned about himself. He won’t ask for anything else.

He sits down next to Mark on the couch, knocks knees with him. _I’m sorry_.

“Yeah,” Mark says softly. Leans slightly into Eduardo’s side: _me too_.

They’re going to make this work.

(Mark’s hair is messed up and his mouth is lush with sleep, and Eduardo’s hands are twitching with the need to touch, and—he can’t.)

He _will_ make this work.

*





	2. Chapter 2

*

 **MARK**

Keeping up this pretense only grows harder. Mark is equal to any task he sets his mind to, except for hiding this. Except for forgetting. Mark is so tired. He closes his eyes and sees not code like he used to, but visions of Eduardo and his long deft fingers, his smile, and he is lost.

Their lunch table is never quiet with Dustin around, and Mark suspects he’s doing it on purpose—picking up the conversational slack for Mark, who is a half-hearted communicator at his very best, and who mostly sits in uncomfortable silence nowadays. Dustin draws attention to himself by, well, being himself, and talking about dinosaurs and disparaging the cafeteria’s curly fries and whatever other thought happens to pass through his mind, and no one pays any attention to Mark and his state of distracted pining; and Mark casually spreads his things across the table, encroaching into Dustin’s space so that Dustin is forced to sit practically in Chris’s lap. Neither one of them bring it up with each other.

Dustin is the only one who knows what’s wrong with him, but Mark feels Erica, who is sitting right next to him, pull her tray in closer to herself, further from Mark, and knows that won’t be true for long.

*

Because Erica is so smart, you see. She is almost as smart as Mark is, and infinitely smarter when it comes to things like people and why they do the incomprehensible things they do (which, granted, most people Mark knows have an edge over him in that respect), so really, it’s only a matter of time.

*

They’re at Mark’s house for once, doing their homework, and Erica has one leg thrown over Mark’s ankle. She’s wearing shorts today. Mark can still appreciate the sight of her legs even when he’s desperately straining his ears to listen to Eduardo and Christy arguing in the next room. He doesn’t know if Erica would appreciate that fact all that much, but it is nice to get confirmation that his hormones haven’t been permanently affected by his brain’s insistence that Eduardo is the only one he wants.

Christy’s voice rises from her heated whisper. “—left you _four_ missed calls, and it took you all weekend to get back to me! Eduardo, I’m not an idiot, I can _tell_ there’s something wrong.”

“It’s not—I’m sorry, I’ve had a lot on my mind, I _said_ I was sorry,” Eduardo says, and he sounds frustrated and apologetic and defensive all at once.

“Sorry isn’t—”

“Look, would you please just keep your voice down,” Eduardo says pleadingly, and then they’re back to whispering for all of two minutes, before Mark hears Christy leave, stairs creaking with the fury of her steps.

Mark stares at his notebook, not processing a single word of what he sees on the page. There is a dull flush of hope rolling through him, and he knows, he _knows_ it’s only going to be crushed, but he can’t help it.

When he looks up, Erica is staring at him, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Erica is not an idiot either.

Mark stares back at her, and Erica slowly pulls her leg off of his, and goes back to her work without saying a word.

Mark’s fingers tighten on his notebook, crumpling the sheet of paper he’s been writing on. This tension has to break soon enough, and Mark is _not ready_ for it.

*

Everyone is so relieved that Mark and Eduardo are back on speaking terms. So is Mark, to be honest, because everything seems a little less bleak when Eduardo is kicking him under the table at dinner and sending comically mock-horrified looks in the direction of Maria and Mark’s father, who won’t stop making eyes at each other like they’re fifteen years old. Mark suspects it’s more than half for the benefit of appalling him and Eduardo.

It’s not all fixed, though. Eduardo seems like he’s trying too hard, sometimes, trying to be witty and charming and everything he’s never felt the need to aim for around Mark. So Mark shoots him a flat look that he hopes adequately conveys how much he _doesn’t_ need that sort of thing, and watches Eduardo’s mouth twitch into a real smile. He wonders what it will take to get Eduardo to throw his arm around Mark carelessly like he used to before. He wonders if he even wants that, if that will only make it harder to keep this secret, if he is close to the breaking point of saying _enough. I can’t keep this to myself anymore_.

Mark doesn’t say anything, though. Whether it is because he is too intelligent, or not brave enough, or too accustomed to his silence, the outcome is the same: the status quo remains, for now, at least.

*

Maria looks at Mark with a thousand questions in her eyes at times; but she doesn’t ask, just waits for Mark to come to her.

She watches Mark watch Eduardo, but she doesn’t ask, and Mark is desperately grateful. It’s relaxing. He can sit by her while she watches a movie, and she will ask him about his day and what he plans to do over the weekend and if he ever intends to move the mountain of pop cans from his room instead of creating modern art with it, but she won’t ask him anything he can’t answer.

He drifts, drowsy, with his elbow on the armrest and his head propped up on his hand, and feels fingers thread through his hair, a low murmur of Portuguese that he can’t understand, but that he recognizes as fond, anyway. It drops into his chest like he’s swallowed something warm and sweet. That’s what mothers do, he guesses.

Mark is distracted all the time, because there is just too much to focus on. There’s schoolwork, and Eduardo, and trying to hide his feelings, and Erica, and feeling more than a little guilty for what he’s doing to her. In what spare time he has, he’s trying to study people so that maybe he can learn how to act like a normal human being who talks to people and everything and has normal issues, because he’s starting to think that maybe his life would be a lot easier if he could just manage that (or fake it, at least).

(If he had to choose between being able to do the things he does with a computer, _knowing_ bone-deep that he’s going to surpass every expectation that’s ever been set for him one day, and being as well-liked and well-adjusted as everyone else around him, he might hesitate, but he would always pick the former. He would.

If he had to pick between that, and having the ability to be the kind of person that could not only talk to Eduardo and tell him what he’s feeling and make him feel the same, but also manage to somehow _keep_ him—

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know which he would pick, and there aren’t many things that would make that choice difficult for him.

He can only think of one other, actually, and _that_ one he knows: he would give up his talents and his brain a thousand times over to bring her back, and the choice between being the person he is and having Eduardo is nowhere near that, but it’s the closest anything has ever come.)

“Go to bed, kiddo,” Mark’s dad says when he catches Mark slumped over his homework at the kitchen table. “You look exhausted.”

Mark rubs his eyes. “Yeah,” he says quietly.

*

It’s two weeks before prom when Erica decides she has had enough.

Mark can’t even blame her for it—not when he’s spent approximately sixty percent of the time he’s been with her desperately trying to pretend he’s not staring at Eduardo, and probably failing miserably at it. Like he’s been doing now, watching Eduardo make up with Christy out of the corner of his eye, making up that very quickly turns into making _out_ , and Mark can’t help but clench his jaw against his roiling emotions at the sight. Next to him, Erica lets out a short, sharp sigh.

“Mark,” she says, and he turns her way at the sound of the finality in her voice. “This isn’t working.”

It takes him a few seconds to catch on, and when he does, oddly enough the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “But—you bought a dress.” He flushes the next second at the inanity of that statement, but it’s true—he’s known that Erica would catch on eventually, that this would end, but he didn’t think it’d be this _soon_. She bought a dress already, he thought he had until prom, at least; until prom before he had to think about how he would handle himself around Eduardo without Erica as a barrier there between them.

Erica’s eyebrows snap together in a frown. “I know I bought a dress, Mark, it’s a great dress. I look great in it, and I’ll look great in it and have a wonderful time at prom whether I’m wearing it and going with you, with my friends, or even by myself. For god’s sake, let’s not use my _dress_ as an excuse to drag this out any further.” There’s a flush to her cheeks by the time she finishes this speech, and Mark can see a spark of anger flaring up in her eyes before she shoves it back down. She’s trying to be understanding. It’s more than Mark had expected.

“I’m sorry,” he offers quietly, and she bites her lip for a second.

“I wish you’d just told me,” Erica says, a little stiffly.

“I wasn’t—I was _trying_ , with you,” Mark tells her, and Erica folds her arms across her chest, closing herself off.

“I won’t be anyone’s second-best,” she tells him flatly, and he stops, can’t think of anything to say.

“You shouldn’t be,” he says finally, and her hard expression eases a little at that.

She looks at him for a moment, as if debating with herself whether or not to say what she’s thinking. Finally, she says quietly, “If you just told him, I think it would go better than you expect.”

Mark shakes his head before she’s even done speaking. “I can’t.”

In the end she gathers her things together and walks away, and Mark watches her go, presses his fingers to his temples in an effort to make the throbbing in his head recede. It doesn’t work. He’s not sure he could have fucked that one up any more spectacularly if he’d tried.

He _liked_ Erica. He still does. Christ, why can’t he make anything work?

*

Mark manages to keep it to himself for about a week by carefully evading any mention of Erica and staying out of the house until dinnertime every day. Then his dad says while loading the dishwasher one day, “Next Saturday is prom, right? Maria and I have a thing to go to that night and it starts at seven, we won’t be back until late. Do you two know what time you’re going to pick up Christy and Erica?”

“Actually, Christy’s coming by to pick me up,” Eduardo says, mouth quirking into a smile. “She told me that if _I_ drive us there in my car, we won’t reach until the next morning.” Mark’s dad laughs.

Mark looks down at his hands. “I’m not going,” he says abruptly. “Erica and I broke up.”

There’s silence for a minute, and when Mark looks back up, he sees Eduardo gaping at him, and his dad frowning and looking concerned.

“Mark, when did—” Eduardo starts.

“A week ago, it was mutual, and I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to talk about it,” Mark says flatly. “This conversation has been riveting, but I’m going to go now.” He sticks his plate in the dishwasher and heads upstairs, ignoring the motion Eduardo makes like he’s got plans to handcuff Mark to the counter and interrogate him thoroughly.

Mark’s halfway up the stairs when a thought occurs to him, and he goes back downstairs and pokes his head into the kitchen for a minute. “Oh, Dad, I hope you realize it would be absurd for you and Maria to change your plans because of this. I had no real desire to wear a tie and watch my alleged peers labor under the delusion that they can actually dance, anyway. I’ll just be in my room all night, I don’t need a babysitter.” He nods firmly at his dad and Eduardo to make his point, and then heads back upstairs before either of them can say anything.

Of course, his dad follows him right upstairs, and Mark has to spend ten minutes convincing him that a) he’s _fine_ , b) he will not wither away into dust if he’s left alone for one night, and c) no, the quality of his life will not deteriorate unimaginably because he missed his eleventh-grade prom. It says something about Mark’s astounding patience that when Eduardo shows up twenty minutes after his dad leaves, Mark refrains from throwing a paperweight or something at him and telling him to go apprentice himself to Dr. Phil if he’s that invested in other people’s relationships.

Instead, Mark settles for glaring at Eduardo in exasperation. “You know, my dad’s got it covered. Having this conversation once was bad enough, I’d really rather not do it again.”

Eduardo holds up both his hands. “Okay, okay,” he says. “I just—you didn’t say anything. For a _week_. Do you want to—”

“Under no circumstances do I want to talk about it,” Mark tells him flatly. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s so damn fine, you wouldn’t even believe how fine it is.”

Eduardo eyes him askance. “Why do I have the feeling that the reason you never lie is that you’re just terrible at it?”

Mark scowls at him. What the fuck does Eduardo know, anyway? Mark’s been lying to him for months now, and he doesn’t even have a clue.

Eduardo is going to go to prom with Christy, and they’ll look stupidly perfect together, and Mark will stay at home preparing for his lifelong role as a brilliant social recluse. Perfect.

*

It’s Saturday night and Mark is laying on his side in his bed, watching Ocean’s Eleven on his laptop. The clock that hangs in the kitchen is ticking distantly, the sound carrying throughout the house. Mark had some leftover pizza and a banana for dinner, and he’s kind of tired, but he’s staying up because he wants to finish the movie. Only because he wants to finish the movie. Not because he’s waiting up for—

There’s the sound of someone walking around downstairs, and it’s definitely one person, not two, so it must be Eduardo. Mark blindly hits stop on his laptop and shuts it down, sets it on his desk. He stretches out on his bed and stares at the ceiling with his hands behind his head, listening, listening, listening as Eduardo turns the interior alarm system back on, rustles around some more, comes up the stairs.

Mark’s door is wide open. Mark continues to stare at his ceiling, even as he feels Eduardo pause in front of his room and lean against his doorway, staring at Mark wordlessly for what feels like endless, breathless hours.

Finally, Mark looks at Eduardo. “Was it fun?” he asks, with a tone that he knows implies he greatly doubts the answer will be in the affirmative.

“Oh, yeah,” Eduardo says, corners of his mouth turning up into a smile. “ _Excruciatingly_ fun. I especially liked the part where it was Caribbean-themed with an inexplicable loop of the Niagara Falls playing.” He’s still leaning against the doorframe, and really, his legs are ridiculous. He is all legs and flippy hair and frighteningly large eyes, and there is absolutely no reason why Mark’s heart should be pounding like this.

And yet.

“I’m devastated I missed it,” Mark says, and sits up properly. Eduardo is still staring at him with this strange, intense look, even as he’s smiling and bantering—he looks like he’s cataloguing Mark’s every movement, taking him apart for study. It makes Mark’s skin prickle, uncomfortable and dizzying. His hands are sweating.

“I saw Erica there,” Eduardo says abruptly. “She—I danced with her, and she said this—she said something that—” He breaks off, clearly searching for words, and Mark thinks about all the things that Erica knows and that she might say, and _feels_ himself stop breathing. His whole body goes numb.

Eduardo must see it on his face, because suddenly he’s scrambling out of his careful lean against the doorframe, pulling the door shut behind him, and he sits on the bed so close to Mark that he practically falls into Mark’s lap. “Hey, hey, Mark, don’t do that. It wasn’t—she only. Look, I was dancing with Christy, right, and—”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Mark says tightly. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“Just _wait_ , please, I can’t,” Eduardo breaks off, shoves a hand through his hair until it looks even more ridiculous, and Mark can’t feel his fingers because Eduardo _knows_ , shit _shit_ this is a disaster, this is him trying to work his way up to telling Mark he’s an idiot for thinking Eduardo could want the same thing. Eduardo just grabs Mark’s wrist in his hand like he’s trying to keep him there by force. “I was dancing with her,” Eduardo continues slowly, “and I couldn’t stop thinking about what Erica said, and about—about you here at home.”

“I’m so sorry I ruined your night by getting _dumped_ ,” Mark spits.

“Jesus Christ, Mark, just _let me finish_ ,” Eduardo says half-desperately. He lets go of Mark’s hand, and leans in close, until Mark can feel the heat emanating from his body. He reaches out and cups Mark’s face in his hand, thumb pressing under Mark’s chin, fingers against his rapid pulse. Mark can feel them when he swallows, and he swallows again, because he can and because the pressure against his skin is perfect.“I thought it was just me. I thought, I—tell me it’s not just me. Tell me I’m not imagining this.”

Mark’s throat feels so tight he wonders dimly how he’s getting any air at all. He closes his eyes, and breathes out shakily, and it’s answer enough. Eduardo makes a low, wordless sound of triumph, of helpless relief, and then he’s kissing Mark in the next second like it’s the oxygen he needs to breathe.

Mark has thought about this a hundred times, wondered what Eduardo kisses like; the reality of it leaves him with trembling hands and he’s so dizzy with it, and he can’t even pull away from Eduardo’s mouth long enough to get air. Eduardo bites his lip accidentally and mumbles an apology, but Mark is too busy trying to get his tie unknotted to even care.

Eduardo pulls away, kisses him behind his ear, his jaw, down his throat. Whispers, “Mark, Mark, you don’t even know—”

“Less talking, get this fucking tie out of the way,” Mark orders, and Eduardo laughs, yanks at it until it comes loose. He’s smiling so widely his face is nearly split in two with it, and only now does Mark realize that so few of his smiles lately have reached his eyes. “Wardo,” Mark says helplessly, shakes his head, fumbles at the buttons on Eduardo’s shirt. “This is so unfair, look, I’m wearing a t-shirt for easy access. You couldn’t do the same?”

“How inconsiderate of me,” Eduardo says distractedly. This may have something to do with the fact that Mark has his fingers dipping inside the gaping collar of Eduardo’s shirt, stroking all the skin he can reach. He’s still half-afraid he’s going to wake up, but this is more real than any dream he’s ever had: he’s never dreamed the way his shirt gets tangled when they both try to pull it over his head, or the way Eduardo’s stomach quivers with suppressed laughter when Mark runs a thumb down it, or the way Eduardo swears and pushes Mark back on the bed, looking frantic and eager and fucking _beautiful_. His dreams have only been half-formed, pale shades of this thing they’re doing, sharp-edged with clarity and unforgettable.

“I call that poor planning,” Mark manages to gasp out, before Eduardo shuts him up with his mouth, pulling away and returning to kiss him, again, again, teasing at his lips. Mark thrusts up against Eduardo’s weight, Eduardo’s thigh a perfect pressure against his cock, and Mark has no illusion that he is going to last past thirty _seconds_ of this. He might actually have a heart attack before that.

“Mark, wanted this for so long,” Eduardo whispers against Mark’s throat. His teeth rake against Mark’s skin, and Mark threads his fingers into Eduardo’s hair to keep him right there. Chokes out a pathetic little “Me too,” that seems to be enough for Eduardo, if the way he kisses the hollow of Mark’s neck and then bites him there is any indication.

Eduardo pushes up onto his knees and scrabbles at the zipper on Mark’s jeans, shoves them down along with his underwear. Mark is effectively trapped by the pants around his knees, and Eduardo stares down at him with dark eyes and a swollen mouth.

The first touch of his hand around Mark’s cock makes Mark sob for breath embarrassingly; he’s overwhelmed and so gone that he’s practically there already. All it takes is a few more strokes and Eduardo’s other hand coming up to press against the tender bite-mark on Mark’s neck before Mark is coming all over himself, accidentally biting his own lip in the process. Eduardo works him through it, and Mark’s still shaking all over when Eduardo shifts, and Mark can feel his cock press against Mark’s hip.

“You,” Mark says, and flaps a hand weakly in a way he intends to mean _your turn_. Eduardo looks almost _pained_ with how turned-on he must be, and Mark regains enough brain cells to kick away his pants and sit up, reversing their positions.

Eduardo groans wordlessly and shuts his eyes when Mark jerks him off, like he can’t keep them open, and Mark licks his lips, tongues the slight cut in the lower. Says quietly, “I want—I want to try—” and Eduardo’s eyes fly open, focus on Mark’s wet mouth, and he groans again when he understands what Mark means.

“Later,” Eduardo says desperately, “Some other time, please, this won’t even last that long.”

Mark wants to kiss Eduardo while he comes, so he does. Leans down and presses their mouths together, sloppy and so wet, and Eduardo cries out when he comes, tightens one hand around the back of Mark’s neck to keep him in close.

Mark keeps kissing him for what feels like forever after that, kisses him until his heart slows down and Eduardo’s breathing loses its ragged edge, until their mouths just keep sliding off of each other with how wet they are.

Mark pulls away and stares down at Eduardo, who is smiling at him like he’s _everything_. Mark wipes his hand on his sheets, presses the heel of it against his own chest, where it feels like an impossible weight has lifted from him. Eduardo catches his hand back and kisses the palm.

Mark looks and looks and looks his fill, because he is allowed. He just says, “Wardo,” and it is enough.

*

 **EDUARDO**

Eduardo notices three things in succession as he starts to wake up: a) the morning sun is filtering in through the window and doing its best to blind him permanently, b) his arm has gone totally numb, because c) _Mark_. Mark’s head is lying right on top of Eduardo’s arm, and Mark is tucked into Eduardo’s side with an arm thrown over his chest, and Mark is frowning softly in his sleep, like he can’t stop himself from thinking even in his dreams. Mark is there. Eduardo is not dreaming.

Eduardo’s heart skips sharply, a joyful ache, and he ducks down to bury his face in Mark’s hair for just a moment. There’s no one there to see him, but his smile is so wide and he is so damn happy; he wants to keep it to himself for now, tuck it away to look at it another day when he needs the memories.

Prom had been—

Erica stepped on his feet a few times, and smiled when he said she looked nice, and her voice wavered only a little when she said, “Listen, there’s something I think you need to know,” and

a dull ringing started up in his ears, the words _I’m not the one Mark wanted. That’s why we broke up_ echoing around in his head, and

he was still dazed when Christy returned with punch for both of them, but not dazed enough to not know that he couldn’t keep doing this to Christy, that it wasn’t fair to her, and

there was dancing and punch and too much noise, Dustin yanking Chris onto the dance floor with an exaggeratedly pleading expression, Christy pulling away from Eduardo as the night went on and his distraction grew increasingly obvious, and the only thing he had beating through him to the tips of his fingertips was _Mark, Mark, Mark_ , and

the night was over. Christy drove him home, stopped in the driveway and looked at him before saying flatly, “I guess we’re done, aren’t we?”; and he had nothing to say, because really they were heading there ever since he realized what he felt for Mark and tried clinging onto Christy to counter it. It was probably the shittiest thing he’s ever done, ruining someone’s prom night by breaking up with her then, and he was lucky she didn’t just leave him at the dance. He was lucky all she did was clench her teeth and let him out of the car, driving off without another word, and

he liked her, he really did, so much, and he knew he’d feel guilty and sorry about it later, but there was still _Mark, Mark, Mark_ rolling through him, catching alight under his skin, and he went upstairs and tried to be brave for once, because it turned out that keeping silent any longer was entirely beyond his capabilities.

—eventful, to say the least.

Mark mumbles something in his sleep, brow creasing. Eduardo runs a careful thumb down the line between his eyebrows, presses into the shallow divot between eye and nose bridge, traces the sharp curve of his cheekbone. He slides his thumb over Mark’s lower lip to feel how full it is, the slight dryness of the skin there, the way Mark breathes over it a little wetly. Eduardo wants to touch Mark everywhere, he wants to wake him so he can kiss all the sense out of him. He wants Mark to keep sleeping so he can look at him forever.

There’s a clatter of dishes from downstairs, and Eduardo jerks back guiltily, heart startled into a frantic pounding. His own room is quite obviously empty, and his mother and Adam probably just assumed he fell asleep in Mark’s after talking like he’s done so many times before, but he doesn’t want to push his luck. He needs to get into some real clothes, at least.

Carefully, he eases his arm out from under Mark’s head, wincing as the feeling slowly comes back, and stretches to the ceiling when he gets out of bed. Mark curls into the empty space where Eduardo had been, fingers twitching like he’s reaching for something. Eduardo is nervous and a little unsure and he needs to go clean himself up as of _yesterday_ before his mother or Adam come looking for them, and yet he is so fucking happy that he’s struck dumb and held still by it, helpless to do anything but stare at Mark for a moment. Mark, whose hair is ridiculous right now, who is vulnerable and tries so hard to pretend he’s above everything, who is everything Eduardo wants.

The clock downstairs starts chiming ten o’clock, and Eduardo shakes his head at himself, slips out of Mark’s room and into his own next door. He uses a tissue to try and clean up the dried mess on his stomach and throws on a pair of pants, and makes sure his hands are clean, and he’s three steps out of his room when he sees his mother coming up the stairs.

She shouldn’t be able to tell. There isn’t anything to tip her off—Eduardo is wearing clothes, and no one can see the bite mark on his chest, and his hair and mouth look exactly as ridiculous as they normally do when he wakes up, no more—but there it is anyway. Some indefinable motherly instinct has her eyes narrowing as she takes him in, then widening in comprehension, and his stomach sinks down to the bottom of his feet when she looks at him and says, “Ah, Eduardo.”

There is no recrimination in her voice, but his own sounds shaky, so weak, when he says, “Mãe—” because his mother has stood by him through everything life has thrown at them, and he _can’t_ lose her over this.

She only motions him forward, though, and cups his chin in her hand. “We should probably have a talk, don’t you think? All of us.” She’s smiling at him reassuringly, and her hand is gentle. Eduardo remembers to breathe again, can only nod in response. “Now, why don’t you go and wake Mark. Come downstairs in ten minutes.”

Eduardo stumbles back into Mark’s room a little dazedly. Mark is still curled up in the same position, and despite the leaden apprehension churning in his stomach, despite everything he’s worried about, Eduardo can’t help the way something in chest eases at the sight. He didn’t know the weight of what he’d been carrying until it was released. Being happy is so much easier than he thought it would be.

Mark doesn’t stir when Eduardo tucks a hand into the curve of his neck, fingers diving into his curls and pressing at his scalp. He doesn’t move when Eduardo murmurs his name, and it’s only when Eduardo sits on the bed next to him, weight dipping the mattress down, that Mark’s eyes squeeze tighter in the frown that means he’s slowly waking up.

Mark opens his eyes slowly, and Eduardo can just _see_ him taking stock of his surroundings, eyes flitting around the room like he’s ticking things off a checklist: _Exhibit A) Wardo’s hand is in my hair; Exhibit B) I am significantly less clothed than I was yesterday; Exhibit C) that is Wardo’s tie over there in the corner; Exhibit D) Oh. Oh._

It’s a little like watching a sunrise. Mark lights up from within, slowly. Eduardo can’t look away from the slight crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the helpless half-smile Mark is so clearly trying to suppress.

“I’d ask you to pinch me but I hate clichés, and I’m sure there are infinitely more pleasant ways to check if I’m awake,” Mark says, dry and quick even when his voice is a little thick with sleep. Eduardo laughs, giddy, and leans down to kiss him good morning; Mark pushes up on his elbows to meet him halfway. Mark pulls Eduardo’s lower lip between his teeth and releases it only after Eduardo lets out a quiet noise of want into his mouth. They have ten minutes? It’s the barest fraction of the time Eduardo wants to spend right here.

“Hi,” Eduardo murmurs, and then: “Um. You actually have to get dressed now, unfortunately. I think our cover’s been blown. We’re required downstairs in—well, five minutes, now.”

Mark’s eyes widen a little. “Oh,” he says, after a beat. “I don’t suppose falling asleep together was especially subtle.”

“No, I think my mom’s just psychic,” Eduardo says half-seriously, and Mark snorts in agreement.

“I actually wouldn’t be surprised at that,” he says, and Eduardo stands up and watches Mark hunt around for some proper pants to pull on. Mark straightens the bed up, pulls the covers tight, starts folding all their shed clothing carefully, and at that point Eduardo realizes that Mark is just looking for things to do so he can avoid Eduardo’s eyes a little longer. “Um, so,” Mark starts, in a terrible attempt at sounding casual. “Is this—what exactly are we doing?”

Look at that. Mark, initiating a conversation about feelings? Eduardo should be surprised, but really he just feels all kinds of special.

“Well, considering the fact that _your_ ex-girlfriend kicked us into gear, and _my_ ex-girlfriend is well and truly pissed at me, quite rightly so, I think we’d better stick with each other, don’t you think?” Eduardo says, sounding blither than he feels. “We’d drive anyone else nuts.”

“ _Ex_ -girlfriend?” Mark says softly, shoulders set in a tense line. He’s still not looking back at Eduardo.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says, equally as soft. “I was kind of awful to her, you know. But she—she knows. That I’m a complete idiot for you.”

And Mark finally, finally turns around. He’s smirking, but his eyes are bright like Eduardo hasn’t seen in months. “I don’t know that you need that qualifier there, Wardo.” He’s still talking when Eduardo kisses him to shut him up, and Eduardo wonders for a second if all those clever, sardonic words will taste beautifully sharp in his mouth; but it all just tastes like Mark, Mark who cannot stop himself from finishing his sentence even when it’s mumbled unintelligibly into Eduardo’s mouth, even though he’s being kissed breathless, even though no one knows what he said but Mark himself. That’s just who Mark is, and it’s ridiculous and endearing, and Eduardo would be embarrassed for himself at how head-over-heels he is if it didn’t just feel so electric and wonderful.

Mark pulls back, nostrils flaring a little as he takes an unsteady breath in, and—yeah, they both smell exactly like what they’ve been doing, sweat and sex, and Eduardo’s stomach clenches a little at the thought. They really should clean up, though. Unfortunately.

They duck into the bathroom, and swiping at each other’s stomachs and thighs with a wet cloth devolves into more making out; and before long Eduardo has Mark sitting on the bathroom counter with his hands locked behind Eduardo’s head, kissing him and arching up and almost falling sideways and impaling himself on the faucet.

“Oh god, please don’t make me go downstairs to talk to our parents with a _hard-on_ ,” Eduardo says desperately, between kisses.

“Who’s making you do anything?” Mark says slyly. “Feel free to let go of me anytime you want.”

“Your leg seems to have different ideas,” Eduardo retorts. Mark’s leg—hooked around Eduardo’s and keeping him steadily in place—pulls in tighter. “No, really,” Eduardo repeats, “really, we need to— _Mark_.”

Mark huffs out an indignant breath like Eduardo is personally ruining everything good in his life, and scoots backward to put his back against the mirror so they have a little more room between them. His mouth is wet and so lush it’s obscene, and the combination of his irritated scowl and his too-large t-shirt and the pulse jumping in his throat makes Eduardo want to drag him back to bed for a week.

“…Yeah,” Eduardo says weakly, and stepping back is absolutely the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life. Pulling their clothes back into order and attempting to straighten Mark’s hair does nothing to hide what they’ve been up to, and really, Adam and Eduardo’s mother are so far from idiots, he doesn’t even know why they’re bothering. Except for the fact that he’d like to face them for this conversation with at least a modicum of presentability , and at that thought, all the sheer nervousness he’s been determinedly suppressing comes surging back up.

Mark must see the rising terror on his face, because he rolls his eyes, grabs Eduardo’s hand and says, “They’re not going to feed us to sharks, Wardo. Come on.”

Eduardo lets Mark drag him out of the bathroom and down the stairs. “I wasn’t thinking sharks. Maybe locked away in a tower forever? A little casual imprisonment for life?”

“Are you Rapunzel in this scenario, or am I?” Mark asks, and he still hasn’t let go of Eduardo’s hand. Mark’s palm is a little sweaty, belying his easy tone, and strangely Eduardo’s own fears are a little eased at that. They can be nervous wrecks together. Wonderful.

When they enter the kitchen, they see Eduardo’s mother sitting at the kitchen table and heckling Adam as he pokes at something on the stove, and he looks up at them the minute he hears their footsteps. He doesn’t appear to be murderously angry, so that’s something, at least.

Actually, he gives them a once-over with an expression that looks something like a mixture of resignation and amusement. “Forgoing subtlety entirely, I see.”

“Because subtlety is what I’m known for,” Mark says flatly, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He _still_ hasn’t let go of Eduardo’s hand, which is good, because there is the very real possibility Eduardo would flee from the room like a cowardly coward if he did.

“There is that,” Adam agrees. “Have a seat, you two.”

There are two empty chairs at the table next to Eduardo’s mom. Eduardo sits in one and tries not to feel like he’s about to be handcuffed and interrogated or something.

“Is this an intervention? This feels remarkably like an intervention,” Mark says, lifting an eyebrow.

Eduardo’s mother pushes a jar in his direction. “Here, have a cookie,” she says. At Mark’s pointedly still-raised eyebrow, she shrugs and adds, “I’m pretty sure they don’t give you cookies when they’re staging an intervention.”

“It’s ten-thirty in the morning,” Eduardo says blankly.

“Well, I won’t tell if you don’t tell,” his mother says dryly, and _yeah_ , eating cookies at an unacceptable cookie-eating time is probably the least of what he’s done right now. Eduardo takes one. It sticks in his throat like a lump of chocolate fear.

“Neither one of you are in trouble,” Eduardo’s mother says. “We just need to talk about this before you two get in any further. If something goes wrong, you can’t just break it off and stop seeing each other, you understand?”

“I know,” Eduardo says, and grabs for Mark’s hand again under the table. “I wouldn’t—we—we’re not doing this ‘just because’. It wasn’t an impulsive decision.”

“I suppose the months of fearful brooding from both of you is indication enough of that,” Adam says, a little curl of humor in his voice. He turns the stove off, and walks over to ruffle Mark’s hair, put a hand on Eduardo’s shoulder. “So. Interrogation time.”

“It just happened yesterday, we aren’t planning on breaking up and ruining everyone’s lives, though I don’t know that people really plan for that sort of thing anyway, and we were going to tell you. Eventually,” Mark says as if reciting from a list.

“I appreciate your forthrightness,” Adam says, mouth quirking. “As well as your desire to get this over with as quickly as possible. Just a few more things, then.” He drops into another chair at the table. “First off, don’t hesitate to come to either of us with any problems. Both of you. Secondly, if something goes wrong, fix it as soon as possible. I think we’ve all had enough dramatic angsting for the rest of our lives, wouldn’t you agree?” Mark makes a face, and Adam lifts an eyebrow in his direction. “And finally…” Something wryly amused takes over his face, and Eduardo starts to get a very bad feeling.

“As much as I’d like to believe that you’ll be spending all your free time playing Pacman in your rooms or watching Disney movies or something, I think we all know that won’t be the case,” Adam says, and Eduardo thinks about Mark’s hands on him, the promise of his mouth, and flushes hot _all over_.

“ _Pacman?_ ” Mark mutters incredulously.

“When I did The Sex Talk Version 1.0 with Mark, I didn’t realize I was only giving him half of the pertinent information,” Adam continues, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Think we should revisit the topic?”

Eduardo sinks further into his seat and tries to die through sheer willpower alone. It doesn’t work.

“I realize you’re a dinosaur in all ways possible, but there’s this thing called the _Internet_ , and it’s marvelously informative,” Mark says flatly. “Really. Don’t trouble yourself.”

Adam eyes him for a moment. “Pamphlets!” he continues cheerfully, as if he hasn’t heard Mark at all. “I see pamphlets in your future.”

“Are we being punished?” Mark says, eyes narrowed. Adam snaps his fingers and points at his son.

“Give him a gold star! You get your deductive skills from me, kiddo,” Adam says. “There’s this wonderful thing called _communication_ , where you actually come to either me or Maria when you’re considering things like this so we can discuss it like adults, instead of either of us walking in on you in what I can only assume was in flagrante delicto.”

“Not quite that bad,” Eduardo’s mother murmurs amusedly. “Eduardo, you’re being very quiet all of a sudden.”

“Kill me, please,” Eduardo says, voice strangled. His face is on fire, he can tell by the way his skin is burning and by the way Mark keeps sending him sidelong glances.

Adam grins, all teeth. “This is _fun_. I’ve apparently lost all ability to embarrass Mark anymore, you’re a nice change.”

“I’ve built up immunity through years of exposure,” Mark says flatly. “Can we be done now?”

Adam waves a hand at him. “Yeah, yeah. In summation: Don’t screw this up. Use condoms. Be nice to each other. Etcetera, etcetera.” Eduardo’s mother has her head in her hands, shoulders shaking slightly with her laughter, and Adam grins in her direction. “Remember when we started dating, we were so worried they wouldn’t get along?”

“Apparently we should have been worried about them getting along entirely too well,” Eduardo’s mother says.

“I’m really hungry, can we have breakfast now?” Eduardo says desperately. Adam takes pity on him and serves all of them a helping of scrambled eggs.

Under the table, Mark nudges his sock-clad foot against Eduardo’s ankle. Eduardo feels heat travel down the back of his neck and tries to bite down on the smile that wants to arise, despite everything.

Adam and his mother very kindly pretend they don’t notice anything at all.

*

“That could have gone worse,” Eduardo says later, lying on Mark’s bed. If he doesn’t think about how the day started, it feels just like any other they’ve had—except for how Mark keeps looking up from his laptop to stare at Eduardo, wetting his mouth again and again and flushing red when Eduardo catches his gaze and holds it.

“See? No sharks,” Mark replies.

Eduardo laughs. Stops, because Mark is staring right at his mouth, eyes narrowing in calculation and interest. Mark stays in his seat when Eduardo pushes off the bed, watches Eduardo walk toward him with his mouth parted a little. Eduardo swivels Mark around fully in his chair until his back is directly to his laptop, leans forward and plants a hand on the desk behind Mark so he’s looming over him.

Mark likes it when Eduardo bites his lip a little. Judging by the noise he lets out into Eduardo’s mouth, he likes it when Eduardo tugs at his hair sharply too.

“We’re going to make this work, okay,” Eduardo whispers against Mark’s lips. It’s not a question.

Mark just pulls him down closer by his t-shirt and doesn’t let him go. “Lock the door,” is all he says.

*

They go to their respective rooms that night, of course. No sense in pushing boundaries any further. Besides, it’s not like they’re incapable of spending some time apart.

Eduardo stares at the ceiling, one hand tucked under his head, the other resting on his stomach. He is lying there, completely unable to fall asleep because Mark is _right there_ on the other side of the wall, and Eduardo can’t stop thinking about him, and this is beyond pathetic, really, Mark would laugh at him forever if he knew, and—

His door opens noiselessly, cutting a swathe of light across his floor. Mark walks in and shuts the door behind him, eyeing Eduardo defensively as if daring him to say something. Eduardo just stares back at him, before scooting over to make room.

“This is ridiculous,” he says helplessly, meaning _both_ of them, because _really_.

“Your face is ridiculous,” Mark says absently, tucking himself into the length of Eduardo’s body and arranging both the blankets and Eduardo himself to Mark’s liking, before finally dragging Eduardo’s arm over himself like the finishing necessary flourish. “Now shut up and go to sleep.”

“The romance is already dead,” Eduardo mutters into the curls at Mark’s temple, but the words turn into a kiss, and Mark’s hand tightens in his shirt, and he decides to follow Mark’s orders this once. He can lament over their (unsurprising, far-from-new) codependence in the morning.

Mark’s lips brushing his neck are the last thing he holds onto before he finally falls asleep.

*




 **MARK**

There is a moment before they enter the school on Monday morning where Mark sees a flash of uncertainty on Eduardo’s face, a moment when Eduardo reaches out to touch Mark’s face and then draws back, unsure. Like he thinks Mark won’t let him.

Mark reaches out for his wrist and pulls it back up to his face. That is not the kind of precedent he intends to set, the two of them hiding this like it’s something to be ashamed of. It’s not. They’ve done nothing wrong, and it makes Mark so happy he’s turning into some sappy caricature of himself, and he doesn’t need to drop a banner announcing it but he wants it known. Also, he has no intention of living his life by the likes and dislikes of the multitude of idiots surrounding him, so.

Eduardo’s whole face goes soft like he heard all of it, like Mark said that all out loud. “Want to go steady?” he says teasingly, eyes crinkling up with his smile.

“I expect plenty of wooing before I put out,” Mark says.

“You already put out,” Eduardo points out.

“Oops,” Mark deadpans, and carries the sound of Eduardo’s warm laughter with him through the rest of the morning.

*

Dustin, who is thankfully accompanied only by Chris, takes one look at them when he sees them in the library during second period and gasps in loud, overblown excitement. “Mark! Any recent developments on the relationship front?” Chris whips his head around at those words, looking Mark and Eduardo up and down before his eyes widen in comprehension.

Mark glares, feeling his ears going inexplicably hot. “Am I carrying a _sign_ or something?”

“No, but you’re practically glowing,” Dustin says, and then stops, mouth spreading in a slow grin. “Maaaaark, is there something _else_ you want to tell us? An incipient bundle of joy, perhaps?”

“Clearly you failed every elementary school science class you ever took in your life,” Mark says, rolling his eyes. Next to him, Eduardo has a hand over his mouth, covering his smile.

“Whatever, dude,” Dustin says, holding up his fist. Mark ignores it pointedly. “Wardo,” Dustin says, turning to him, “Keep him happy or I’ll come after you, you hear me? Do not make me deal with pining-Mark again, it was way too stressful.” He’s clearly joking about the last part, and just as clearly serious about the first.

“I will,” Eduardo says seriously, and Mark can feel the heat in his ears travel all the way down the back of his neck.

“Thank god you two pulled your heads out of your asses,” Chris says, smirking. “Otherwise Dustin’s lifelong dream of being a matchmaker might have come to fruition, and you really didn’t want that.”

“Excuse me, I had some quality ideas!” Dustin says, voice indignant and wounded.

“Lifted from every romcom and/or teen movie you’ve ever _seen_ , yeah,” Chris points out, kicking Dustin’s ankle. “I’m still surprised you didn’t throw a party and suggest a game of Seven Minutes in Heaven.”

“That was number nine on the list, you can’t break the order of the list, _Christopher_ ,” Dustin says, jabbing Chris in the side with his elbow. Chris punches his arm in retaliation, and Mark can just see this about to escalate, but Chris pulls back out of Dustin’s reach before that can happen.

“Hey,” Chris says, looking a little more serious all of a sudden. “I really am happy for you guys.” He’s kind of smiling at them like they’re puppies or unicorns or something equally as nauseatingly sweet, and Eduardo is smiling his thanks back, and Mark thinks he might actually be getting diabetes from sheer exposure to this feelings fest alone.

“Right,” Mark says decisively, “This is all very touching, but I actually have a report to finish. You three go do whatever it is you do in place of studying that keeps you from having a GPA as high as mine.”

Dustin mouths, “He’s back!” at the ceiling, as Mark starts to walk away. Mark lets himself smile where Dustin can’t see him, because—Dustin is looking out for Mark, and other people know now about Eduardo, and this is so easy. Things like this don’t come easily for Mark, but there it is. Virtually effortless.

*

They don’t have the same third period class, but during the passing time between third and fourth, Mark ducks into the bathroom and finds Eduardo in there, washing his hands.

“…Hi,” Mark says inanely, after realizing he’s been standing there like an idiot for the last minute without saying anything, watching Eduardo’s hands move. Eduardo’s fingers are so long, longer than Mark’s, and when Mark looks at them he gets vivid flashes of memory, of those fingers wrapped around his cock, or running over his mouth, or just touching him in general. Mark thinks about them doing other things, pushing inside of him, maybe—he’s watched some porn, read up about it, knows what to do, but everything takes on a slightly nervous edge of excitement when he thinks of it specifically in terms of Eduardo, and what Eduardo can do with Mark. _To_ Mark.

God, this is a disaster. Mark has never been this distracted in his life. He just sat through an entire hour of U.S. Government and has absolutely no idea what he learned.

“Hi,” Eduardo says in response, and his voice has gone kind of strained and breathy, and when Mark meets his eyes he sees how dark they are—because Mark has been anything but subtle, and Eduardo _has_ to know what he’s been thinking. “Come here often?” Eduardo says, biting his lip to keep his smile back, breaking the storm-like tension so they both can breathe again.

Mark rolls his eyes, but can’t help the small laugh that escapes. “Charming,” he says dryly.

“I’ve been told I am, yes,” Eduardo agrees, turning off the tap and shaking off the excess water from his hands. Mark takes a step closer, then another and another until he’s standing right in front of Eduardo, and he can see the quick rise-and-fall of Eduardo’s chest. Eduardo isn’t looking him in the eye. He’s staring at his mouth.

“Who’s been lying to you?” Mark says quietly, smirking, and Eduardo lets out a noise that’s half-laugh, half-groan, and reaches down to tip Mark’s chin up so he can kiss him.

Eduardo is so tall, Mark has to lean into him and get his weight up on his toes so he can kiss him as thoroughly as he’d like. Eduardo wraps an arm around his back to hold him up, and Mark pulls away to breathe, dives back in, fists Eduardo’s gray t-shirt in his hand as added support. Eduardo makes the best noises. Why are they at school right now? If life were at all fair, Mark would open his eyes again and find the two of them back in his bedroom with a locked door and endless time to kill.

When they break apart, Mark belatedly thinks to check the bathroom for other people who might actually be using it for its intended purpose.

“There’s no one there,” Eduardo says. His voice is rough, and he keeps licking his lips. Jesus.

Mark pulls Eduardo’s shirt out of its state of disarray, says, “Right. See you after school,” and basically flees the bathroom before he gives in and drags Eduardo into one of the stalls for the rest of the day.

*

When school lets out, Eduardo walks Mark through the hallways with a hand looped through the top strap of his backpack, and that’s when Mark sees Erica ducking into the library with a stack of books in her arms.

“Wardo, could you give me, like, twenty minutes?” he says. Most of the time social niceties escape him, but he knows if there were ever someone to whom he owes his thanks and apologies both, it’s Erica.

“…Yeah, I think I need to have a conversation of my own,” Eduardo says after a second, a guilty wince clear as day in his voice. Mark follows his gaze and sees Christy talking to one of her friends a few feet away from the door. A small, stupid part of him doesn’t want Eduardo to go over there, to ever talk to Christy again without at least wearing a two-foot sign that says MARK WAS HERE, but he knows how irrational that is.

“Yeah,” Mark says, shifting from one foot to the other, and like he can hear the hesitation in his voice, Eduardo strokes his thumb over the back of Mark’s neck and smiles at him with the whole world in his eyes before he starts walking toward Christy. The thought of someone knowing him that well should scare the hell out of Mark, but, well, it probably will make things easier for _both_ of them if Mark isn’t required to actually talk about his feelings at any point like a normal human being.

Mark heads into the library. Erica’s sitting at one of the front tables, and she only looks up when Mark sinks into the seat across from her.

She stares at him. Erica does a very good pointedly lifted eyebrow. Mark just stares back, and he wants to say _thank you so much_ , and he wants to say _I’m sorry_ , but what inevitably comes out is, “Meddler.” It’s deadpan and teasing, and then he winces because, does he have that right anymore? Maybe he doesn’t have that right anymore.

But Erica just leans back in her seat and says smoothly, “That’s funny. That didn’t sound a _thing_ like ‘thank you’. Want to try that one again?” Her mouth is twitching a bit.

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing,” Mark says, twisting the string from his hoodie in his fingers, and ‘thank you’ is what he _means_.

“You’re welcome, Mark,” Erica replies, shaking her head and laughing a bit. “Congratulations, you’ve said ‘thank you’ like a real boy; you’re not actually a robot, now stop hovering and get out of here. I have work to do.”

“I could find you a substitute boyfriend, we could call it even,” Mark suggests as he stands back up, slipping his backpack on again.

“Oh, but who could ever measure up?” Erica says dryly, waving a hand up and down to encompass the whole of Mark in one gesture.

“That is a dilemma,” Mark agrees, and because she deserves more, he hesitates for a second then says, “I’m sorry.”

Erica stares at her paper for a bit, then looks up with a wry smile. “I’d probably be angrier if I didn’t suspect that you and Eduardo are disgustingly happy together.” Her smile widens into something more real when Mark can’t hide his small flush at her words. “Yeah, like that.”

Mark shrugs a little, face still hot. Then, because he is wondering and because he has never learned how to dance around a topic with any measure of subtlety, he asks, “Are we—still friends?”

Erica bites her lip in the way he knows means that she is laughing at him on the inside, and says, “Yeah, Mark. It’s not me, it’s you, we’re friends, now _go_.”

“Okay,” Mark says, nods at her awkwardly and leaves, unexpectedly relieved by how well that went.

He leaves the school, looking for Eduardo, and finds him standing outside by the benches still talking to Christy, his whole body set in an apologetic line. Christy has her arms folded across her chest, closed off, but at least she doesn’t look liable to punch Eduardo in the face.

Mark stops a few feet away, and Eduardo and Christy notice him in unison, and even mid-apology, Eduardo cannot stop a smile from spreading across his face at the sight of Mark. This jealousy Mark has is completely irrational; Eduardo is clearly thrilled to see him, and Christy clearly has no interest in taking Eduardo back, and yet part of Mark wants to go over there and do something ridiculous like stand pressed up against Eduardo’s side pointedly until Eduardo wraps an arm around him like he does so instinctively. Fuck, Eduardo is so bad for Mark’s usually logical mindset. All his vaunted common sense dissipates in the face of Eduardo’s, well, _face_.

Christy’s eyes flick between Eduardo and Mark a few times before she sighs sharply and drops her arms. “I forgive you, asshole. Mostly,” she says to Eduardo, and then turns to Mark, jabbing a finger in his direction. “And _you_ didn’t do anything wrong, but don’t expect me to start hanging around you two and your sickeningly twitterpated looks for a while, all right?” She scowls at them both and then digs in her pocket for her keys. “I’m going home now, you two go hold hands and frolic in the forest or whatever it is you do.” With that parting shot she heads toward her car, leaving Eduardo behind looking torn between mortification and bemusement. Mark bites down on a smirk.

“Ready to go, Bambi?” Mark says, and Eduardo shoots him a flustered glare, before it melts away into a fond smile like he _physically cannot_ keep any displeasure on his face while looking at Mark. Mark kind of wants to shoot the both of them himself with how absolutely appalling they are.

But he still tucks his fingers into Eduardo’s side pocket for a minute before they get into the car, and lets Eduardo drop his hand onto Mark’s knee at all the red lights all the way home.

*

Maria is the only one home when they get inside, and she’s sorting some of the papers strewn across the kitchen counter.

“We’re going upstairs, Mãe,” Eduardo says, dropping his keys and starting to pull Mark by the hand.

“You go upstairs, Eduardo,” Maria says immediately, looking up. “Leave Mark here for a minute.”

Shit. Mark freezes a little. She hadn’t _seemed_ angry at him, about this—this thing he and Eduardo have, but how is Mark supposed to tell? Mark is absolutely useless at reading people, what if she _is_ mad?

Eduardo doesn’t look too worried, though, and he presses his thumb into the center of Mark’s palm reassuringly before he says, “Okay,” and goes upstairs, leaving Mark behind. Traitor. Fuck.

“You’ll be with him in a moment,” Maria says, and she’s smiling at Mark fondly, so whatever she has to say can’t be too bad. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m glad he has you, Mark. He always tries so hard to be what he thinks people want, and he never has to try, with you.” Mark swallows, fingers twitching restlessly at his side. Why would anyone want Eduardo to be anything but himself? Eduardo is the kind of good that doesn’t come about in real life unless it’s being faked, and Eduardo is so smart, and Eduardo likes Mark, prickly issues and asshole comments and all.

He doesn’t say any of that out loud, but Maria looks at him like Eduardo had this morning, like he’s an open book to the both of them even when he tries to close himself off. It’s terrifying. It’s wonderful.

“I’m glad you have each other,” Maria says gently, and she runs her fingers through his hair like she has done before, only this time there is no hesitance. Because she is a mom, and caring comes easily to her, and apparently even caring about Mark is easy. “He doesn’t want you to change either,” she whispers into his hair, and he grits his teeth and lets her hold him for a full minute, because there is something sticking in his throat and he can’t do anything else but stand there and wait for it to fade away.

She lets him go after that, and Mark just heads up to his room with his hands shoved inside his pockets. Eduardo is inside, sitting on Mark’s bed and looking at the picture on Mark’s bedside table. Mark just leans in the doorway for a minute, watching him, before he says quietly, “She would have liked you.”

Eduardo looks up, and he’s smiling a little uncertainly. “You think so?” he says, and the fact that he can ask that question at all seriously, the fact that someone like _Eduardo_ could doubt himself to this extent makes Mark want to go back in time and eviscerate anyone who’s ever had any part in making Eduardo feel that way.

“I know she would,” Mark says matter-of-factly. It’s the truth. He doesn’t remember much about his mother, but the one thing he’s never been able to forget is the overwhelming sense that she _loved_ him—it’s one of those basic truths he holds onto, a building block upon which he’s constructed himself. And anyone who loves him would have to like Eduardo, because Eduardo is so good for him. Eduardo makes him so happy he doesn’t even feel like himself, he feels like maybe he is a different person who has some ability to handle this human interaction business after all.

Eduardo looks at him for a long moment, eyes flicking up and down as he traces over Mark’s face. Mark twitches under his gaze but holds still, because Eduardo’s mouth is all soft and contented, so clearly looking at Mark makes him happy. Mark would do a lot of things to make Eduardo happy, he wants to keep him happy all the time, and holding still to be stared at is the least of them.

“Are you kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, or is it just me?” Eduardo says plaintively, even as he’s reaching out to pull Mark down on the bed with him.

Mark exhales a sigh of relief. “Not just you,” he says firmly. “This is way too easy.”

“God, there’s something wrong with us,” Eduardo says, laughing a little as he tugs on Mark’s hoodie string.

“Inborn cynicism is something to be valued, not a fault,” Mark says seriously, and then tries to ignore how cynical he doesn’t feel when Eduardo laughs all sweet and warm into his mouth.

“Yeah, but let’s not do that,” Eduardo murmurs between kisses. “Cynicism over, starting now.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Mark replies, but Eduardo’s hands are diving under his shirt, pulling Mark into his lap, and something warm is cracking open in his chest, and it looks like it does work that way. It really does.

*

 **EDUARDO**

For the first fourteen years of his life, Eduardo never considered things in terms of what made him happy and what didn’t. It was always: how can I make myself better, smarter, seem older, make my father proud, make him _notice_ me; how can I change myself, hide myself, break myself and re-build myself, _how can I do better?_

It’s easier now. Easier to see that that is not the way it’s supposed to be when a father really loves you.

Eduardo still forgets that sometimes, and he still doesn’t quite know what it means to be entirely himself, too used to tailoring his every action for the benefit of others; but he knows that when he figures it all out, he’ll never be required to change himself for someone else ever again.

*

 _Things that make Eduardo happy:_

\- His mother’s arms around him, warm and strong and one of the unbreakable constants in his life.

\- When he makes a sly joke and Mark, brilliant Mark with his unmatchable biting wit, is surprised into laughter, mouth curving in unmistakable appreciation.

\- Peanut butter cookies.

\- The elegant permanence of equations, where one side equals the other, and that is that.

\- The comfortable weight of Adam’s hand on his shoulder, silent and steady and there when he needs it.

\- The hitching of Mark’s breathing in Eduardo’s ear, the tight curl of his fingers in Eduardo’s shirt. Mark’s elusive dimples.

\- Agatha Christie mysteries.

\- Friday night movies, with Mark incessantly picking apart the gaping plot holes of whatever they chose and whispering a steady stream of commentary in Eduardo’s ear, Adam pausing the movie again and again to ask them ‘are they _sure_ they wouldn’t rather keep up their comedy act instead of finishing the movie, they seem to be having so much fun.’

\- Little things. All the little things.

*

 _Things Eduardo wishes he could let go of, but hasn’t found the way to yet:_

\- That split second feeling of ice-in-his-veins panic when he disagrees with anyone, the momentary stutter, the _wondering_ if this is one more straw that will make them love him less.

\- Fear of spiders. Well, _fear_ might be too strong a word, it’s really just a vivid dislike, it’s actually not that big of a deal. ~~It’s absolutely a fear.~~

\- _His father_.

*

June rolls around, almost the end of the school year, and Eduardo is expecting nothing when he pulls out a bundle of mail from the mailbox.

He tosses most of it on the kitchen counter when he gets inside, but there’s a large envelope addressed to him. He doesn’t even glance at who it’s from before tearing the flap open, and it isn’t until he’s been staring at the front for a good three minutes that he even realizes what he’s looking at.

A slow, numbing chill washes over him.

Eduardo sees it as if in flashes: the words _wedding_ and _Diego Saverin_ and a name _Elena Martins_ that is unknown to him, but that paints a picture he knows is correct; a woman who would have said _Oh you have a son? You must invite him, it’s only polite_ , because his father _never_ would have dreamed of taking the trouble otherwise, Eduardo knows that bone-deep, and he gasps air harshly into his lungs when he finally remembers that he has to breathe.

There’s a note tucked in with the invitation, short and succinct and covered with his father’s distinctive, disciplined handwriting.

 _Eduardo_ , it starts, and Eduardo scans it and finds phrases like _would like to resume a relationship_ and _trust that you will meet me halfway_ , and fuck, who would know better than him what lies between every carefully chosen word that comes out of his father’s pen? Every letter, every lecture, every conversation is an opportunity for manipulation, whether insidious or benign, and all Eduardo hears in his head when he reads his father’s note is _didn’t care when you left_ and _social conventions dictate that I acknowledge my son’s existence when an occasion like this comes about_ , and his largest, oldest fear rises up again: that he will never, never be able to get the sound of his father’s voice out of his ears.

“Shit,” Eduardo hears behind him, and he doesn’t know when Adam had come up behind him and started reading his father’s note over his shoulder, but he can practically feel the outrage Adam is emanating like heat coming off a fire.

“Would it kill him to just say ‘I miss you and I really want to see you again?’” Adam bites off, and Eduardo laughs, a strange, edged sound. He doesn’t turn around. “Assuming he’s even capable of it,” Adam says under his breath, and Eduardo’s fingers tighten, crumpling the paper in his hands. There’s a slow, steady burn of anger starting to roil hot in his belly, and he doesn’t know who it’s directed at ( _that’s a lie_ ), but Adam is _right there_ and saying all these things that Eduardo cannot listen to right now, because what does Adam know? What does—Eduardo spent _fourteen years_ thinking about that question, wondering if maybe it wasn’t that his father was incapable of showing affection or pride in his actions, maybe it was just that it was _Eduardo_. Maybe just being Eduardo made it difficult, fourteen years of wondering if being himself was an insurmountable crime, and what does Adam know? He and Mark are so easy together, something Eduardo has been looking for all his life and they make it look so _effortless_.

“ _You’re_ not my father,” Eduardo spits out, voice shaking, whirling around. “You don’t—you don’t know anything about it, what do you—how do you know it’s not me?” He doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore, only that something hot and bitter is rising up inside him, and he needs to bleed it out somehow, can’t find anywhere to direct it and Adam is standing in his path. “Why do you just assume it’s his fault, and not—and not—” The words _What is it that makes you want to believe in me when even my own father couldn’t manage it?_ stick in his throat, all jagged-glass shards of memories.

And then he stops, shuts his eyes, because he is _such a fuck-up_.

He just yelled at _Adam_ , who’s done nothing but be the kindest man Eduardo has ever met, and now he’s ruined it all, ruined this relationship that he thought—he thought—

In the next instant, Adam yanks him forward into an embrace that’s probably intended more to help Eduardo’s shaking legs hold him up than anything else. “I know it’s his fault because it couldn’t possibly be yours,” Adam says evenly in his ear, like it’s as simple as that. Eduardo chokes on and swallows back a sob. Is it supposed to be as simple as that? Eduardo has no example by which to judge except for Adam and Mark, and for all he knows they could be the exception, the ideal, not the norm. “I know I’m not your father,” Adam continues gently, “but I think anyone who can’t appreciate what a good kid you are is just chronically stupid. Sorry.”

Eduardo laughs thickly, because at times like this it’s incredibly obvious from whom Mark learned his hatred for polite social pretenses. His heart is still pounding and he kind of wants to run away somewhere to collect himself. He doesn’t like people seeing him like this ( _always present your best self, Eduardo_ ), but Adam has him in an iron grip and doesn’t seem to be letting go.

“And you’re allowed to yell at me and tell me when I’m overstepping, you know,” Adam says pointedly, ruffling the back of Eduardo’s hair. “Without all the panic attacks afterward, if you would; I have enough gray hairs as it is. I’m not going to kick you out and disown you because you weren’t happy at me for five minutes. Have you _met_ Mark?”

“But that’s _Mark_ ,” Eduardo says helplessly, pulling away. “That’s just—he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t do or say things like that, you _have_ to like it. It’s easy when it’s Mark.”

Adam eyes him for a moment with a strange, soft smile. “For the record, if I’d had any reservations about your relationship with him—which I didn’t—that would have set them to rest.”

Eduardo flushes a little at his words. He looks down at his hands, the note still crumpled in one of them, stomach still squirming a little in guilt. Adam snorts, and ruffles his hair again.

“It’s cute that you think you’ve mortally offended me or something, but I promise you I’ve gotten a lot worse before,” Adam says, and Eduardo laughs a little, settles his shoulders back out of the tense line they’ve been in.

“I’m, um, going upstairs,” Eduardo says, shoving the invitation and the note into a drawer to worry about it later. Then, heartfelt: “Thank you, Adam.”

Adam flaps a hand at him, smiles and says, “Tell that son of mine to come downstairs when he gets the chance, would you? Prove that he’s still alive.”

“I’ll pass along the message,” Eduardo promises, smiling back, and heads upstairs, still a little shaky. It really should tell him something that Adam didn’t even question that he’s going up to see Mark now, that that’s where he was planning to go all along. That when he’s feeling this off-balance and turned-around and weary, his feet unerringly lead him to Mark.

Mark is lying down and tapping at his laptop, but he looks up at Eduardo when he enters the room, studying him intently. Eduardo was less than quiet downstairs just now, he knows Mark probably heard him having his phenomenal blowup at Adam. He’s worried for a split second that Mark might be upset with him, but Mark just scoots over all the way to the side, wordlessly making room, and Eduardo’s eyes are burning a little when he lies down next to him and puts his face against Mark’s neck.

They just lie there for a few minutes. Mark’s silence doesn’t push at all, just lets Eduardo come to it when he feels like it.

“My dad’s getting remarried,” Eduardo mumbles into Mark’s neck, and saying the words out loud is harder than he expected it would be. “He sent me an invitation. And a note.”

“Did he,” Mark says tonelessly.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says, laughing a little because it’s better than blurting out the mess of things he’s feeling and doesn’t even know how to begin to articulate. “It, uh—it was definitely less than sincere.” Mark says nothing, just tugs Eduardo a little closer until their legs are tangled together. “Also I yelled at your dad. Sorry.”

Mark snorts. “Good. He could use a little being-yelled-at. Might shake his conviction that he’s universally appreciated.” Eduardo huffs out another laugh against Mark’s skin, and Mark shivers a little when he does. Maybe most people wouldn’t find Mark comforting, but those are the people who want to hear empty reassurances that mean all of nothing; Eduardo finds Mark comforting because if he has nothing to say he just sits with Eduardo, and his company is enough.

And those times when he _does_ say something—it’s never empty, and it means everything in the world.

“You don’t have to be perfect all the time,” Mark says quietly. “Not even any of the time, actually. Quite frankly I’d feel more reassured about the long-term success of this relationship if you _weren’t_ some kind of paragon of virtue.”

Eduardo pulls his head out of the crook of Mark’s neck and smiles up at him, feels the tension building up behind his eyes start to dissipate. “I think we both saw how virtuous I _wasn’t_ last night. And are you saying there’d have to be something wrong with me to make me stick with you forever?”

“There _is_ something wrong with you,” Mark says, mouth twisting into a smirk, and he’s only typing with one hand now, his left arm curling around Eduardo, fingers pushing into Eduardo’s hair. “You think I’m some kind of a catch and I’ve just found it in my best interests to let you keep deluding yourself thus far.”

“You’re an idiot,” Eduardo tells him, sinking down a little so that he can put his head on Mark’s stomach, the edge of his laptop digging into his temple. “I love you. That’s why this is going to work long-term.”

Mark exhales, a quiet, shaky little sound. “See,” he says a little hoarsely after a moment, rubbing his thumb over the back of Eduardo’s neck.”Delusional.”

“Stop fishing for compliments,” Eduardo says into Mark’s shirt, and then leaves his mouth open against the fabric, because he likes the way he can feel Mark’s stomach quivering underneath his lips after every hot breath he lets out.

“I never fish. Can I help it if you just constantly find yourself overwhelmed by my charms?” Mark says, voice a little breathless. Eduardo noses under the hem of Mark’s t-shirt, makes a noncommittal noise against his bare stomach. Smiles and presses his teeth against the skin, and above, Mark makes a little gasping noise, a hitch of breath, and it is so hard to hold onto any of those old hurts and holes that haven’t quite healed when he has _Mark_.

Mark, who drops a hand down to tug at his hair, and says so softly, “Um. You too,” and Eduardo is so skin-drunk that it takes him a moment to catch up, but when he does he almost laughs out loud, because that is so _Mark_.

“Don’t think I won’t get you to say it for real later,” Eduardo threatens.

Mark shuts his laptop firmly and pushes it to the side. “Get your clothes off and I’ll say anything you like,” he says wholeheartedly, and Eduardo bites his lip to contain a smile, does what Mark says, lets Mark make him forget for a time.

*

“Do you want to go to the wedding?” Eduardo’s mother asks gently later that evening, when it’s only the two of them making dinner together like they used to all the time.

Eduardo stares down at his hands as he chops up onions, and he thinks about for a minute.

He doesn’t want to see his father again, not really. He doesn’t want to stand in front of that gaze, measuring him and finding him wanting; he doesn’t want to feel like he is twelve, thirteen, fourteen and uncertainty is the subtitle to every day of his life.

He wants to stop hearing his father’s voice forever, though, and maybe he needs to see him one more time to make that happen.

“I don’t know,” Eduardo says, finally looking up and smiling wryly. “Can I think about it for a bit?”

“Whatever you decide,” his mother says, planting a kiss on his forehead like he is still five and coming to her to kiss away his every hurt. He loves his mother so much. “Whatever you want.”

Whatever he wants. Eduardo likes that idea.

They all eat dinner in front of the television for a change, and Mark crosses his ankle over Eduardo’s and starts surreptitiously shoving the tomato chunks from his rice onto Eduardo’s plate. Eduardo slips him his onions in return. Adam returns from putting his plate in the sink and makes sure to whap them both upside the head equally, and Eduardo’s mother makes comically disappointed faces at them.

 _Whatever you want_.

Eduardo wraps his fingers around Mark’s wrist, rubs his thumb over the knob of bone there. Mark leans fully into his side, and Eduardo holds onto him for the rest of the evening.

*

 _Things that make Eduardo happy (addendum):_

This list will never be finished.




\--

-


End file.
